You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an candid account, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I basically roast the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis 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, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio the group while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
