You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was preparing for an appearance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then she 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.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio the group while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
