You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The lead track, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with breast cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. 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 log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a gown on and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my affected breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
