🔗 Share this article

You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.

The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while at the same time coping with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.

She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.

Our interview takes place at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Jessie is sharp-witted, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her standup debut next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the crowd.”

Personal Battles and News

The artist was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had a busy schedule.

“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am

She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy recently and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”

The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”

A History of Health Challenges

Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

She reminisces to her childhood, already starting her career performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). 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 irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio Soul Deep while studying at the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”

Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees