You wouldn’t believe it, the singer says. There she was readying for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and oversized specs. Think biker chic meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or blow, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut featuring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the trio the group while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
