You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name Jessica Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, tackling every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with breast cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. 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 lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning featuring in the London theater in the production (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the female band the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
