You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
Our interview takes place at a studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ 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 considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy recently and my affected breast now resembles a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and young Jessica has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
