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You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.

The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly coping with her cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.

She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.

We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Think biker chic meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, bold and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the audience.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.

“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after a long hiatus and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”

Previous Struggles

Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”

She reminisces to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the West End in the production (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “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 young Jessica has joined the girl group the group while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees