Cat Janice – born Catherine Janice Ipsan in Northern Virginia on January 20, 1993 – was a singer-songwriter best known for her viral hit “Dance You Outta My Head.” Raised in the Washington D.C. area, she took violin and piano lessons at an early age. Over the next 18 years, she was involved with orchestras, jazz bands, and theater performances before she began to be noticed for her work as a pop singer, songwriter, and producer. After the release of her Wild EP (2015), she became a local sensation, winning the Best Rock Artist award at the Washington Area Music Awards (WAMMY) in 2019. Her “Pricey” single caught the attention of a larger audience thanks to its use in the Netflix show Selling Sunset. She continued to release a series of acclaimed singles as she moved closer to a more commercial mix of dance and pop including “Crypto Kids” (2019), “Luxury” (2020), and “Love Warning” (2022). During this busy musical period, she also pursued her master’s degree in coastal geology while taking short breaks to write and record. In 2022, Cat Janice was diagnosed with an aggressive type of cancer called sarcoma. After surgery, she began to work on her debut album while also going through chemotherapy. Next came the singles “Chill the Fck Out” (2023) and “Wishing I Was You” (2023) before she was declared cancer-free. However, the cancer returned in her lungs shortly before the release of the album Modern Machine (2023). Just four days before she began hospice care, Cat Janice released the single “Dance You Outta My Head” on January 19, 2024. The song became a viral sensation thanks to several social media platforms. Cat Janice died on February 28, 2024, at the age of 31. Less than two weeks later, her family released her first posthumous single, “Starry Night (Loren’s Lullaby)”.
