You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J states. There she was readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was planning an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. 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 nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘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 says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
She is familiar with health problems. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band the group while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
