You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with breast cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘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 scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They lead you. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the trio the group while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
