🔗 Share this article

You wouldn’t believe it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.

The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while living with the disease. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.

She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.

We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the fans.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

She was preparing for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.

“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am

She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”

Past Medical Issues

The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has often paired with achievements for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”

She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career starring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, 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 year.”

Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees