You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, her latest release, was supposed to be an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is sharp-witted, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
She was getting ready for an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after years away and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a gown on and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
