You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The record, her latest release, was supposed to be an open book, tackling every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly coping with breast cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Cornish is quick, bold and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They lead you. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
