You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly living with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have indicated malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but now I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my right breast now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
