You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jessica Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, failed relationships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with her cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. 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.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after years away and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I 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 lead you. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just marched with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. 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 sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal recently and my affected breast now resembles a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
