You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Then in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, addressing every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with breast cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her standup debut next year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was planning an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an test, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ 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 okay. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a gown on and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the girl group the group while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
