You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was readying for her comeback record in eight years, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later next release, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly coping with breast cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “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. She is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. 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 following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal recently and my one side now appears as a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. 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.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
