You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Then in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. 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 Cornish was talking to press 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 received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is sharp-witted, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was preparing for an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, 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 numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They lead you. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal recently and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has entered the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
