You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and big frames. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
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 reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
