You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The album, her latest release, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with her cancer. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and oversized specs. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Jessie is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an slot at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news 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 just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ 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 frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit 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 automobile accident and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
