You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and young Jessica has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
