You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was preparing for an appearance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have indicated malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I 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 dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened recently and my one side now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, 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 flawless. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut performing in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
