You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, real name J. Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but now I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my affected breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s experienced in health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her youth, already beginning starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
