You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
