You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, addressing every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was preparing for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened recently and my affected breast now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. 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. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to highlight not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
