You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. There she was gearing up for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, addressing every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with characteristic openness. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while coping with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was planning an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy recently and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. 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 rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already beginning starring in the London theater in the production (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
