You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was preparing for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They lead you. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her chest, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
