You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Then in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous 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 moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Jessie is quick, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut soon. “I love making people laugh. When performing I often tease the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after eight years without an album 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 jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my affected breast now resembles a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! 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 ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the stage in a musical (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
