‘It has taught me to embrace life more’: Jessie J on cancer, career returns and conquering the Chinese market

You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.

The artist, actual name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly living with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.

She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.

Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Think rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. She is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the audience.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

The artist was getting ready for an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.

“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened recently and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”

The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, 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 perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

Past Medical Issues

She is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”

She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has joined the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”

Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees