You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment gearing up for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting 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, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘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 contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a gown on and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements 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). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward several years, and young Jessica 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 about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
