You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. There she was readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. 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 a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after years away and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘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.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ 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 viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is familiar with health problems. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already beginning starring in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio the group while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
