You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The album, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, addressing every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal four months ago and my affected breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. 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! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
