You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine rocker vibe meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Jessie is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened recently and my one side now appears as a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career starring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group the group while attending the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
