You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was planning an appearance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before 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, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
