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You can’t imagine it, Jessie J states. There she was preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have breast cancer.

The artist, actual 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 candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then next release, Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with the disease. Subsequently she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.

Our interview takes place at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and oversized specs. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the audience.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was planning an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.

“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me 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 expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but this time I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. 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. My plans were disrupted.”

A History of Health Challenges

She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

She recalls to her youth, already making her debut performing in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash 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