You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, addressing every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later second single, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was preparing for an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had convinced herself it was okay. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside career highs, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career performing in the West End in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
