You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on 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 fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to physical challenges. Frequently they align with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the stage in the production (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
