You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The artist, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while dealing with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an slot at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had convinced herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and young Jessica has entered the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
