You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Then in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s 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. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was getting ready for an slot at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do 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 call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer 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 viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked 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. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio the group while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
