You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The artist, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was intended as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later second single, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is quick, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ 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 frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you are wheeled, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ 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 reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
