You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name J. 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 endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine biker chic meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Jessie is quick, bold and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after years away and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but then I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her childhood, already beginning performing in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
