You wouldn’t believe it, the singer states. There she was readying for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later second single, Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time dealing with the disease. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was planning an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after years away and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a gown on and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
