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You can’t imagine it, Jessie J remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.

The artist, real name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.

She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, 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’re at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. She is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the crowd.”

Personal Battles and News

She was preparing for an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had convinced herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had many commitments.

“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have shown aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but then I just walked with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my right breast now resembles a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”

Past Medical Issues

She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”

She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band the group while studying at the performing arts school. “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 lost my voice for a year.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees