You wouldn’t believe it, the singer says. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was intended as an open book, addressing every moment of pain she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. On stage I basically roast the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was preparing for an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles 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 weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my one side now looks like a odd shape.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career featuring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
