You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with breast cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Picture biker chic meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I basically roast the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced 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 debuting the project after years away and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. 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 found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but now I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my backside out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened recently and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut starring in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
