You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with the disease. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 70s 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 smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I 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 considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, 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 hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because 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
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut featuring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
