You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while living with her cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me 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 expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning performing in the London theater in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio the group while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
