You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was readying for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly dealing with the disease. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and big frames. Picture rocker vibe meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the movie. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘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.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is familiar with health problems. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut starring in the West End in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a year.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees