🔗 Share this article

You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Then in March she was found to have breast cancer.

The artist, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.

She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.

Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

The artist was preparing for an slot at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.

“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after a long hiatus and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

Previous Struggles

Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Frequently they align with career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”

She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the London theater in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep 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 collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”

Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees