You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly coping with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, cream boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has joined the girl group the group while attending the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
