You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Think motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt 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 considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the stage in the production (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has entered the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
