You wouldn’t believe it, the singer states. There she was readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with her cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was getting ready for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then Cornish had assured herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call 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 reports have indicated aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a medical attire and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! 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. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to medical emergencies. Frequently they align with career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
