You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was readying for her comeback record in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, gaslighting, 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 illness. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “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 respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-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 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 launching this thing after a long hiatus and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my right breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “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 lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
