You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The album, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, 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 conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, 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 perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career starring in the London theater in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio the group while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
