🔗 Share this article

You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, tackling every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.

Our interview takes place at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the audience.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

Cornish was getting ready for an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ 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?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.

“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

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

She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”

A History of Health Challenges

She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”

She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut starring in the stage in the production (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the girl group the group while attending the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”

Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees