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You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J remarks. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Then in spring she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.

The musician, real name J. Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with her cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she had a mastectomy.

She offers me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.

We meet at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and large glasses. Think motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her initial standup show next year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I often tease the crowd.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.

“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted 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 thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘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 terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my affected breast now resembles a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”

The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

A History of Health Challenges

The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, 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 performing in the London theater in the production (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a year.”

Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees