You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then second single, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an slot at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about 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 Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after years away and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the academy. “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 car crash and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
