You can’t imagine it, the singer states. There she was readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later second single, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with her cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. She is quick, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ 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. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. 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 difficult experience. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career starring in the London theater in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in 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 automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
