You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut next year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘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 viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She believes 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 punch in the stomach, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
