You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an slot at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. During crises you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points 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 chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and teenage Jess has entered the girl group the group while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
