You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time dealing with breast cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
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 lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is familiar with health problems. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. Frequently they align with career highs, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
