You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. She is sharp-witted, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her initial standup show in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have indicated malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning starring 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 cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward several years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while studying at 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 throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
