You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The artist, actual name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, 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 recorded music (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture rocker vibe meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a gown on and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she adds, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my right breast now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is for health and appearance. Her chest, she notes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Amusingly 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
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career performing in the stage in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the heart condition WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
