You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, addressing every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was planning an slot at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened recently and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career performing in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
