You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in eight years, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with typical candour. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later next release, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with her cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, cream boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an slot at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have shown aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Cancer ruined that plan.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the girl group the group while studying at the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
