You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch 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 found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, 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. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ 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 viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, 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 OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
