You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, 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, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, tackling every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then next release, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time living with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her youth, already making her debut starring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band the group while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
