You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. 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 so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They lead you. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in physical challenges. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the stage in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
