You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time coping with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
