You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. There she was gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The album, her latest release, was intended as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with breast cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is sharp-witted, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an slot at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer 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 [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing 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 reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career 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 fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
