Jessie J Finally Sets the Record Straight: "I'm Always Going to Be Attracted to Women"

Sometimes a single phrase can follow you for years, gaining weight with each retelling until it becomes something you didn't quite mean to say. For Jessie J, that phrase has been "it was a phase"—words she spoke in 2014 about her bisexuality that sparked immediate backlash from the LGBTQ+ community and have haunted her ever since. But this week, in a refreshingly honest conversation, the British singer-songwriter has finally addressed the comment head-on, offering clarity, contrition, and a fuller picture of what she actually meant all those years ago.

Speaking to The Guardian, Jessie J—whose real name is Jessica Cornish—was direct about her regret. "It wasn't me saying I'm not bisexual," she explained, making clear that her sexuality itself was never in question. "I think I'm always going to be attracted to women. I'm so honest and open about it, but I don't want a label on it, like 'Jessie J the bisexual singer.' "

The distinction matters. What Cornish was attempting to communicate a decade ago—though she now acknowledges she did so clumsily—was her resistance to having her identity become a defining public narrative rather than a fundamental part of who she is. But in 2014, that nuance got lost in translation, and the comment was widely interpreted as a dismissal of bisexuality itself, causing real harm to her ex-partner and frustrating queer audiences who saw it as another instance of a public figure downplaying same-sex attraction.

What makes this moment significant isn't just that Cornish is walking back her comments—it's that she's acknowledging the specific emotional damage those words inflicted. When asked about her ex-partner, Cornish didn't shy away from the impact of her phrasing. "I'm sure it hurt her because our relationship was amazing and we were really serious," she said. "We lived together for a long time: around three years."

That admission carries weight. It's not a generic apology or a PR-sanctioned statement designed to smooth over controversy. Instead, Cornish is naming the real person who was hurt by her words—someone she no longer remains in contact with—and acknowledging that the relationship was significant and genuine. In a media landscape where celebrities often issue carefully worded non-apologies, Cornish's willingness to say directly that she hurt someone matters.

For LGBTQ+ audiences who criticized her in 2014, this moment offers something rare: a public figure genuinely reckoning with how her words landed, rather than defending the original statement or dismissing the criticism as oversensitivity.

But this interview reveals far more than just a recalibration of how Cornish discusses her sexuality. In the same conversation, she opened up about a year that has tested her in nearly unimaginable ways: a diagnosis of breast cancer, a miscarriage, and the lingering grief of losing a close friend to suicide.

The cancer diagnosis came earlier this year, and rather than allowing it to become the defining narrative of her life, Cornish credits her parents with helping her maintain perspective. "My mum and dad always did such a great job of not making that the definitive thing in my life, and not making me define my character by my worst days," she reflected. "That was amazing and has carried through to now."

What's particularly striking is how these health challenges have shifted her relationship with living itself. "My health struggles have made me live life more, eat better, work out more," she said. "Made me live in the moment."

Perhaps the most emotionally resonant part of Cornish's recent work is her new song "I'll Never Know Why," which addresses one of the darkest aspects of this past year. The track was written about her bodyguard and close friend Dave Last, who died by suicide in 2018.

In the song, Cornish sings about someone she describes as "lost and hopeless," and in the interview, she explained the profound motivation behind putting this grief into art. "I miss him so much, man," she said. "He was my guy for seven years. He was like my big brother. It makes me so sad that there was a loneliness there that meant it got to that before he would call me."

What's particularly moving is Cornish's stated hope for what the song might accomplish: not just processing her own loss, but potentially reaching others who are grieving or struggling. "I hope it's a song that can help people who are left behind. And I also hope it helps people who are thinking of doing it to see a different perspective of what they would leave behind and how much they're loved and wanted."

For LGBTQ+ listeners, this resonates on multiple levels. Queer communities have long understood the particular sting of losing friends to suicide, and the ways that isolation and invisibility can compound mental health crises. A song that attempts to speak to both the bereaved and those in crisis—to name both the loss and the love that surrounds them—is a gift to a community that has lost too many.

Circling back to the question of identity and labels, Cornish's clarification offers a useful model for thinking about sexuality in a more nuanced way. She's not saying she's not bisexual. She's saying she doesn't want her entire public identity to be collapsed into a single descriptor—which is a fair and understandable boundary.

At 37, Cornish has lived long enough to know the difference between denying an aspect of yourself and simply refusing to let it become your entire brand. That's a distinction the queer community understands well: the difference between being closeted or in denial, versus simply choosing not to perform your identity for public consumption.

The fact that she's been attracted to women, lived with a woman for three years in a serious relationship, and continues to be open about that attraction makes clear that her sexuality is real and ongoing—not a phase that passed. What was a phase, perhaps, was her willingness to downplay it or apologize for it.

Cornish's new album, "Don't Tease Me With a Good Time," is now available, and it carries the weight of everything she's been through—the health scares, the grief, the reckoning with her own past statements. These aren't the songs of someone who's moved on from difficulty; they're the songs of someone who's moved through it, and emerged with a clearer sense of what matters.

For fans who've followed Cornish's career—and particularly for queer fans who felt hurt or dismissed by her 2014 comments—this moment feels like a genuine turning point. It's not a performance of allyship or a calculated PR move. It's a 37-year-old woman taking responsibility for her words, acknowledging the specific person she hurt, and continuing to live her life with honesty and openness, even as she refuses to be reduced to a single identity or label.

In a media landscape that often demands celebrities choose between total transparency and complete privacy, Cornish has found a middle path: open about her attractions, clear about her boundaries, and committed to using her platform to speak to grief, loss, and resilience. That's a model worth paying attention to.