You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photography studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged 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 fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to highlight not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She recalls 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 heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has entered the trio the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
