You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with the disease. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Think rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the film. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Cornish is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was planning an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness 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, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. 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 terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has often paired with high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, 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 being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
