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You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Then in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.

The musician, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was meant as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she went public, and in July she received surgical treatment.

She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.

We meet at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the crowd.”

Personal Battles and News

Cornish was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.

“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful 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 considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal recently and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”

The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

Past Medical Issues

She is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”

She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the London theater in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”

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