You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine motorcycle style meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is quick, irreverent and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was planning an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the Monday. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.
“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, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have indicated malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
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 marched with a medical attire and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, 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 recently and my affected breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
