You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, real 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, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, 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. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning starring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band the group while studying at the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
