You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time coping with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is quick, bold and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease 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 checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on 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 Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Oi, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
