You can’t imagine it, the singer says. There she was preparing for her comeback record in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, 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 artist, birth name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The album, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an candid account, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with breast cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, cream boots and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Cornish is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician 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 tells it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels 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 blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career starring in the London theater in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
