You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, on top of the world. Then in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an candid account, addressing every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “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 smiles. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent 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 like entertaining. When performing I often tease the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results 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, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a gown on and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already making her debut featuring in the West End in the production (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
