Celebrated Back-Up Singer Crystal Taliefero Fights Cancer
Crystal Taliefero has sung backup for A-listers like Billy Joel, John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen for over 30 years.
In February 2020, she was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer and recently had her last surgery for treatment of the disease.
Taliefero says she was anxious about going into the hospital during the pandemic; it’s important to continue cancer screenings during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Billy Joel doesn’t just give birthday shoutouts to anyone, but then again, Crystal Taliefero is not just anyone.
The powerhouse performer, 58, has had a “fairy tale” career in music, spanning more than three decades during which she’s performed back-up vocals for Joel, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. She’s filled in for Clarence Clemons and sung harmony alongside the Bee Gees. Last year, Joel wrote on Instagram, “Happy Birthday Crystal Taliefero! @cookiesangria.”
Taliefero was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer on February 2, 2020, which meant she had to go through treatment at the start of the pandemic. This presented its challenges.
Speaking with Rolling Stone magazine from her home in Nashville in May 2020, the singer says of her treatment, “This is going into my fourth badass chemo. I'm going to call it that since the nickname is so bad. They call it the ‘Devil's Juice.’ But that's a triple negative, which means it's highly aggressive. They want to squash that baby as quickly as they can.”
Billy Joel (L) with band members Mark Rivera, Crystal Taliefero and Carl Fischer perform on stage at Madison Square Garden on May 28, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Myrna Suarez/Getty Images)
Taliefero says, “we're going to do one more of those bad boys and then I have 12 of the Taxols and after that it's going to be that journey. Once I get past these two chemos I have a surgery to remove it and then radiation.”
This week, the singer told News 4 Nashville, “My last surgery was just a couple of weeks ago," saying she feels good and that, “The sun has come out for me.” Common treatments for breast cancer include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
Of battling cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Taliefero tells the magazine with a laugh, ” I couldn't have picked a better time to go through cancer.” She looks at her diagnosis as a challenge that can be overcome, saying, “It's just one more hurdle. My whole career, my whole life has been like this, so I'm not surprised God threw an extra bone at me and said, ‘Let's see what you do with this.'”
She also reports feeling a bit anxious about going into the hospital to get treatment. “I feel a little anxious because I don't want to go back to the hospital. Last time I went, I had neutropenic fever, which meant my white-blood-cell went down under 30,” she says. “They tested me for COVID and before the results came in, they put me in the COVID ward. That's the last place you want to be when you have cancer.”
In an earlier interview, oncologist Dr. Elizabeth Comen explains the need for continuing cancer screenings, despite the ongoing pandemic. She says, “So we know that cancer has not gone away just because we’re in the middle of a pandemic. We also know that some elective procedures and potentially preventative care– things like colonoscopies, and mammograms, and pap smears– may have been put off a couple months because we wanted to limit the number of people that were coming in to the hospital and also keep patients at home unless they really needed to leave.”
“But fortunately, now that we have a little bit of a better hold on how to protect patients, how to disinfect, how to clean in between patients and scatter so that we’re not crowding our waiting rooms, it’s really, really important to remember to talk to your doctor about your screening mammogram or any other preventative tests that you may need,” says Dr. Comen.
