Anastacia

Chicago, Manhattan and a talent show she did not win

Anastacia Lyn Newkirk was born on 17 September 1968 in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother was a Broadway actress and her father a singer who left the family when she was seven. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 13, a condition she has lived with and spoken about ever since, and the family moved to Manhattan's West Side when she was 15.

She started dancing professionally in New York clubs in 1983, absorbing house music and freestyle, and by 1990 was working as a backing vocalist. The break came sideways. In 1998 she competed on MTV's talent show The Cut, in front of a judging panel that included Elton John and Michael Jackson. She did not win, but the exposure was enough. Epic Records signed her in March 1999.

Not That Kind and the years that followed

Her debut album, Not That Kind, arrived in 2000 and went multi-platinum across Europe and Asia. The lead single 'I'm Outta Love' went to number one in Belgium, Australia and New Zealand, and defined the template she has worked from since: a soul voice with a rock rasp, pushed through pop hooks. In Britain and mainland Europe she became a fixture on radio and in arenas almost immediately, while the United States never caught up.

Freak of Nature followed in 2001 and sold around seven million copies. The self-titled Anastacia, released in 2004, did better still, with roughly eight million sold and 'Left Outside Alone' spending fifteen weeks at number one across the European charts. By 2006 her first three albums had passed twenty million sales between them.

The career was interrupted early. A routine mammogram in January 2003 found breast cancer, and she went through surgery and radiotherapy before setting up the Anastacia Fund for breast cancer awareness. In February 2013 she announced a second diagnosis and cancelled a European tour. She has since described herself as having recovered twice.

The later catalogue includes Heavy Rotation in 2008, the covers set It's a Man's World in 2012, Resurrection in 2014, Evolution in 2017 and Our Songs in 2023, which was certified Gold in Germany. Across the whole run she has sold more than fifty million records and collected 227 gold and platinum certifications.

Where she stands in 2026

The current chapter is built around the 25th anniversary of Not That Kind. The #NTK25 anniversary tour played 64 shows across the UK and Europe, and, according to the announcement of the 2026 dates, sold out. Setlist.fm has 61 documented setlists for her in 2025 and a further 20 already logged for 2026.

In an interview with HELLO! magazine published on 22 September 2025, speaking by video call from South Kensington, she said 2025 would run to 70 shows once she had finished dates in Italy, Spain and Australia. She was 57 at the time. She talked about living with Crohn's, her two recoveries from breast cancer, and a calmer personal life, and said she wanted to make a new album.

That album has now been announced. Symphonic Revolution is due on Friday 20 November 2026 and reworks her hits with the 60-piece City Light Symphony Orchestra, recorded in Lucerne. It is being sold on CD and double vinyl. In the retailer notes she says working with the orchestra let her approach the songs in a fresh way and that she is proud of the result.

The tour that supports it opens at Belfast's Waterfront Hall on 17 September 2026 and moves through Dublin's 3Olympia, the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow, Manchester Apollo, Wolverhampton Civic Halls and Cardiff's Utilita Arena before the OVO Arena Wembley show on 26 September and a final British date at the Brighton Centre on 27 September. Setlist.fm already lists Amsterdam's AFAS Live for 29 September, so the run continues on the continent. The Wembley date is her first headline appearance there since 2004.

Who is on the bill

On 8 July 2026 the tour announced its support. ACROBVT, a British alt rock-pop band fronted by Ben Edwards, open every date. Their singles 'Neon' and 'A Thousand Times' have picked up radio play in several countries, and the press material places them somewhere between Nothing But Thieves and The Killers.

Wembley gets an extra guest. Roachford, the British soul and rock singer who broke through with 'Cuddly Toy' in 1988, has released ten studio albums and holds an MBE for services to music, appears only at the London show. He played more than 100 live dates in 2025, so this is a working musician rather than a nostalgia booking. At Wembley, ACROBVT open, Roachford follows, and Anastacia closes.

What the show is like

The clearest picture of the current show comes from the anniversary tour's London Palladium date on 6 May 2025. The stage was dressed as a brick building covered in graffiti of stars and smiley faces, with a neon sign reading #NTK. The Upcoming's Paulina Subia, reviewing on 7 May, described the band of guitarists, backing singers and percussionists, and four costume changes: a green studded leather jacket with tinted glasses, a yellow studded jacket over a sheer leopard-print skirt and denim flares, an all-black leather and denim look, and a rainbow-sequinned jacket with platform boots for the finale.

The setlist that night ran to more than two dozen items. It opened, oddly, with The Simpsons theme from tape before 'One Day in Your Life', 'Now or Never', 'Staring at the Sun' and 'Paid My Dues'. The middle stretch mixed album tracks such as 'Nobody Loves Me Better', 'Sick and Tired', 'Overdue Goodbye', 'Made for Lovin' You' and 'Heavy on My Heart' with an acoustic 'Welcome to My Truth'. The band covered its costume changes with a medley of 'Vogue', 'No Diggity' and 'Everybody (Backstreet's Back)' and later Free's 'All Right Now'. She sang Guns N' Roses' 'Sweet Child o' Mine' herself, and 'Left Outside Alone' carried an interpolation of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'. The encore was a remixed 'Not That Kind', 'I'm Outta Love' and an unaccompanied crowd reprise of 'Left Outside Alone', with the A-Team theme playing the room out.

Attitude's Jamie Tabberer, writing on 15 May 2025, was broadly won over but not uncritical. He found the wall of sound occasionally too much for a room the size of the Palladium, thought the remixed 'Not That Kind' a let-down, and felt the costume changes lacked variety. Against that he praised her between-song warmth with the audience and her band, her deadpan face while hitting difficult notes, and the way she swished the microphone in and out to shape the sound. He compared the devotion in the room to Judy Garland's following. The Upcoming's review reported the audience on its feet and singing through 'Left Outside Alone' and called the finale a joyous return to London.

Festival sets are shorter and tighter. At the Seaside Festival in Spiez, Switzerland, on 29 August 2026, she played 75 minutes, from 5.15pm to 6.30pm, with a seven-song logged set: 'Staring at the Sun', 'You'll Never Be Alone', 'Sweet Child o' Mine', the Eros Ramazzotti duet 'I Belong to You', 'Paid My Dues', 'Left Outside Alone' and 'I'm Outta Love'. The arena shows in September should expect the fuller format, with the anniversary staging and the covers intact, and the symphonic album not yet released when the tour begins.