You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. At that moment gearing up for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, tackling every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was getting ready for an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my one side now looks like a odd shape.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is familiar with health problems. She believes her perspective on the cancer 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 assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was diagnosed with the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Oi, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
