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You can’t imagine it, Jessie J says. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.

The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.

We meet at a studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I basically roast the fans.”

Personal Battles and News

The artist was planning an appearance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.

“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful 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 scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”

The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”

Previous Struggles

The singer is familiar with health problems. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”

She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”

Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees