You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The musician, actual name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then second single, her song 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 still secretly dealing with the disease. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Cornish is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six 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 about to put out music in recently I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
