You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with her cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and big frames. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is quick, bold and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened recently and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut starring in the stage in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “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 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
