Remembering Brandon Blackstock: Understanding Melanoma

What was actually said

Brandon Blackstock, a talent manager, died on August 7, 2025, at the age of 48.

His family said he died peacefully at home in Butte, Montana, under hospice care. They said he had been ill with cancer for more than three years. Days later the Silver Bow County coroner told TODAY that the cause of death was melanoma. The manner of death was natural.

That is the whole public record, and this page will not add to it. What follows is the medicine behind the word melanoma.

One word, many different situations

Melanoma is a cancer of melanocytes. Those are the cells in the lower layer of the epidermis that make the pigment giving skin its color. The National Cancer Institute groups skin cancer into three main kinds: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma.

Melanoma is by far the least common of the three. It is also the one most likely to grow into nearby tissue and travel to other organs. NCI notes that most skin cancer deaths are melanoma deaths.

But "melanoma" covers a very wide range. A thin one removed in a clinic and one that has reached the liver share a word and little else. That is why a headline about one person tells you nothing about another.

Thickness is the first question

Staging melanoma starts with a number measured under a microscope. A pathologist measures the tumor in millimeters, from the surface of the skin down to its deepest cell. NCI says the stage depends on that thickness. It also depends on whether the skin over the tumor has broken open, and on whether cancer has reached lymph nodes or distant organs.

Stage 0, also called melanoma in situ, means abnormal melanocytes sit only in the epidermis. Stage IA is no more than 1 millimeter thick. Stage IB is more than 1 and no more than 2 millimeters, with no break in the skin.

To find out about the lymph nodes, surgeons use sentinel lymph node biopsy. A tracer or blue dye is injected near the tumor. It drains to the first node in line, and that node is removed and read. NCI's clinical summary says this should be considered for tumors of at least 0.8 millimeters when the nodes feel normal.

When to get checked

NCI's list is specific. Ask a clinician to look at:

• A mole that changes in size, shape, or color.
• A mole with ragged or blurred edges.
• A mole containing more than one color.
• A mole where the two halves do not match if you split it down the middle.
• A spot wider than about 6 millimeters, roughly a pencil eraser.
• A spot that itches, oozes, bleeds, or has broken open.
• New moles that appear right beside an existing one.
• Any change in an area of colored skin.

Those five features are often taught as ABCDE: asymmetry, border, color, diameter, evolving. Do not skip the places that never see sun, including palms, soles, and the skin under fingernails and toenails.

On prevention, NCI is direct that ultraviolet radiation from the sun, sunlamps, and tanning beds damages skin in ways that can lead to skin cancer. Our cancer prevention overview puts sun protection alongside the other steps with real evidence behind them.

What treatment involves

For early melanoma, treatment is surgery. The tumor comes out with a rim of normal tissue around it, sometimes with a sentinel node biopsy at the same time.

When the risk of return is high after surgery, NCI lists adjuvant treatment, meaning treatment given after surgery to lower that risk. The options are immunotherapy with nivolumab, pembrolizumab, or ipilimumab. The other is targeted therapy with dabrafenib plus trametinib. Immunotherapy releases brakes on the immune system so it can attack cancer cells, and our guide to immunotherapy explains how. Targeted therapy blocks a specific faulty protein, here one made by an altered BRAF gene.

The list is longer for stage III melanoma that cannot be removed, for stage IV melanoma, and for melanoma that has come back. NCI names immunotherapy and targeted therapy, alone or in combination. It also names an oncolytic virus injected into the tumor, radiation to the brain, spine, or bone, and surgery on single tumors. Which of these fits depends on the tumor's gene changes, where it has spread, and the person's other health conditions.

NCI also lists palliative therapy by name. That means treatment given to ease symptoms and improve quality of life. It runs alongside cancer treatment, not instead of it. Hospice is a later and separate step.

The survival picture, for a group

SEER is the federal cancer surveillance program. It publishes the American Cancer Society's projection of roughly 112,000 new melanoma diagnoses in the United States in 2026 and about 8,510 deaths. Across all stages, five-year relative survival for people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022 was 94.7%.

Stage drives almost all of that. In that same 2016–2022 group, SEER records 77% of melanoma as found while still confined to the original site. Five-year relative survival there is 100.0%. Ten percent is found in nearby lymph nodes, at 76.0%. Five percent is found after it has spread to distant organs, at 34.0%.

These are averages over thousands of people diagnosed years ago. They describe a group, not any individual reading them.

What this does not mean

A coroner's finding names a cause of death. It does not say what stage the cancer was at diagnosis, or what treatment was given. None of that was made public here.

It also does not mean melanoma is usually fatal. Three quarters of cases are caught while local, and that is the group the numbers above are mostly describing.

Sources

• TODAY: Kelly Clarkson's ex-husband Brandon Blackstock's cause of death is melanoma, coroner says
• NCI PDQ: Melanoma Treatment (Patient Version)
• NCI PDQ: Melanoma Treatment (Health Professional Version)
• NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Melanoma of the Skin
• NCI: Sunlight and Skin Cancer Risk

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

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