You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, losing a baby, failed relationships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with breast cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And the doctor messaged 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 expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the stage in the production (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
