You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while at the same time dealing with the disease. A month later she went public, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I often tease the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was planning an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out 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 get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ 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 making her debut starring in the West End in the production (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while studying at 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 long period.”
Hey, I say, wait, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
