You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and big frames. Think 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, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. She is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was planning an slot at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis 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 log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I 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. They walk you down. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning starring in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and young Jessica has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
