You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with her cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I basically roast the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “uneven. 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 rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career starring in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with 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 being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Hey, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
