You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with the disease. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re 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. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I often tease the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning featuring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band the group while studying at the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
