You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with her cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Jessie is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an slot at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now appears as a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside career highs, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and young Jessica has entered the female band Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
