You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, addressing every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and oversized specs. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an slot at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
