You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jess Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was preparing for an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish 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.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt 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 dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning performing in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band the group while attending the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
