You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, birth name J. Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with the disease. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.
Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Think rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, bold and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
Cornish was planning an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then Cornish had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and no new music. And she contacted me 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 thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my affected breast now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I reflected, no need to bully me, 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.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has affected my well-being.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career featuring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and young Jessica has joined the female band the group while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees