You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name Jessica Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, failed relationships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and big frames. Imagine biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance next year. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an appearance at the ceremony when she discovered a mass. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was okay. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but this time I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”
A History of Health Challenges
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to medical emergencies. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I rehearsed between visits on an IV drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has become part of the trio the group while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
