You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, her latest release, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while all the while coping with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s 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. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was planning an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and no new music. And the doctor messaged 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 informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” 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.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened recently and my affected breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her chest, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio the group while studying at the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
