You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. There she was readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly dealing with breast cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after years away and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. 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 not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
