You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Then in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The artist, actual name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an transparent story, addressing every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while coping with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is sharp-witted, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her chest, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; something severe or obscure 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 cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the medical problem 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 drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
