‘It has made me live life more’: Jessie J on cancer, comebacks and cracking China

Endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, suicide and gaslighting … they are all laid bare on the singer-writer’s new album. But just as she finished recording it, she got a shock diagnosis. She explains why it’s made her determined to be in the moment

You couldn’t make it up, Jessie J says. There she was preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler having struggled to conceive for a decade, on top of the& world. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast& cancer.

The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t& Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last recorded& music (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No& Secrets, was released in April. But by then there& was& a& mighty secret. The cancer. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while& still secretly living with breast cancer. A& month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.