You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J says. There she was readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Then in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her initial standup show in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I basically roast the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was getting ready for an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her childhood, already starting her career starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio the group while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
