You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before 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 thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just strolled down with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal four months ago and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the stage in a musical (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness 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 young Jessica has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
