You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was gearing up for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name Jess Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. A month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. On stage I often tease the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was getting ready for an appearance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after a long hiatus and an extended break. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have indicated malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but however Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
