You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J remarks. There she was gearing up for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was planning an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but now I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue 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 returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and young Jessica has joined the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
