You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later next release, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with the disease. Subsequently she went public, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes 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 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 log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial 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. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but then I just strolled down with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly 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
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio the group while attending the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
