You wouldn’t believe it, the singer states. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, birth name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an candid account, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, 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 “Are you kidding?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Jessie is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an appearance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
