You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly dealing with her cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an appearance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘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 call on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They lead you. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. So inconsiderate! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! 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
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her youth, already making her debut performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band the group while attending the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
