You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Then in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with her cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, cream boots and large glasses. Think biker chic 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 film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I often tease the audience.”
The artist was planning an slot at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ 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 serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. 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 considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened recently and my right breast now resembles a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, 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 ideal. Illness changed that.”
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in physical challenges. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with high points for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning performing in the West End in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
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