You can’t imagine it, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Then in spring she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted 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 believing it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. So inconsiderate! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already beginning performing in the stage in a musical (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
