Category Archives: Goat Girl

How a cancer diagnosis inspired a fresh outlook for one young musician

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At the age of just 22, the very last thing you want to hear is that you have stage 4 cancer, but for some people the only response is to tackle it head on – which is just what Ellie Edna Rose-Davies did

I barely noticed it at first. A bump on the right side of my neck, small but definite. I was 22 and had no health issues (I’d never even broken a bone), so I didn’t think much of the lump. But my boyfriend was concerned, so I made an appointment to go to the GP.

For the next few months, I would see and feel more lumps spreading up my neck, and even larger ones under my armpits. I went to the doctor three times, where I was told: “It’s not cancer” and that I had “nothing to worry about”.

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Goat Girl: ‘We’re seen as harmless because we’re not men’

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With a member diagnosed with cancer and their politics deepened by BLM, the south London indie quartet have reassessed their priorities ahead of their excellent second album

South London quartet Goat Girl were deep into making their second album when it became clear that something was very wrong with their youngest member, guitarist-vocalist Ellie Rose Davies. At the end of 2019, she had had lumps on her neck for some time, which eventually spread to both armpits. It wasn’t until the 23-year-old’s “fourth or fifth” trip to the doctors that she was finally referred for a blood test, then a biopsy. “By which time the cancer was at stage four,” she says.

Davies had Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and had to start a six-month course of chemotherapy immediately. “We were pretty worried because we knew it was getting worse,” says their bassist, Holly Mullineaux. They had been mixing the record with their producer, Dan Carey, when Davies got her results, “and we all just started crying”.

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