You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was meant as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was getting ready for an slot at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the stage in the production (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
