You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was readying for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with breast cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my right breast now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is no stranger to illness. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ From a young age, 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 beginning starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
