You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The artist, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. 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 jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “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.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
