You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. 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 made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time coping with her cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was planning an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. 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 log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to highlight not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the London theater in the production (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has entered the trio the group while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
