You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jess Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a gown on and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal four months ago and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career featuring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has joined the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in 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 car crash and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
