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 mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with her cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White 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 going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
