You wouldn’t believe it, the singer says. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for ten years, on top of the world. Then in spring she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The record, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched 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. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
