You can’t imagine it, the singer says. There she was readying for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
