You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Then in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, cream boots and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt 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 fear going under. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, 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. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
