You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was preparing for her new album launch in eight years, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and at long last the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, addressing every moment of pain she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly dealing with her cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the film. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, 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 love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘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 informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but now I just strolled down with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut starring in the stage in the production (she was cast 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 rehearsed between visits on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
