You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was readying for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, addressing every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an slot at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she contacted me 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 thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have indicated malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial 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 frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but this time 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 lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal four months ago and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band the group while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
