You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an open book, addressing every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. 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 difficult experience. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and teenage Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
