You can’t imagine it, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jess Cornish, is known for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while still secretly dealing with the disease. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was getting ready for an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought 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 roll down in a bed, but now I just marched with a gown on and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already beginning starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem WPW, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and young Jessica has entered the trio Soul Deep while studying at the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a long period.”
Wow, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees
