You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, her latest release, was meant as an open book, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
Our interview takes place at a studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a medical attire and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning starring in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
