You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine biker chic 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 picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They lead you. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal four months ago and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, 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 rough time. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career featuring in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
