You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name Jessica Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was supposed to be an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Picture biker chic meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was planning an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling 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 reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my right breast now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. So inconsiderate! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, 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 happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning starring in the West End in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
