You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. 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 a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, real name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Jessie is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was planning an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; 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 wake up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy recently and my affected breast now resembles a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning performing in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and young Jessica has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
