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You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.

The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She shoots me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.

We meet at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show next year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the fans.”

Personal Battles and News

She was getting ready for an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.

“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my affected breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”

The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”

Previous Struggles

Cornish is no stranger to illness. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”

She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the West End in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the trio the group while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a long period.”

Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees