You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The lead track, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was inopportune 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 she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has often paired with high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career 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 medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the girl group the group while studying at the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
