🔗 Share this article

You wouldn’t believe it, the singer states. At that moment readying for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.

The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was meant as an open book, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later second single, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and she was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.

She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.

We’re at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I often tease the fans.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

The artist was getting ready for an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had a busy schedule.

“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ My initial 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. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”

The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. Such disrespect! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”

Past Medical Issues

The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”

She recalls to her childhood, already beginning starring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”

Wow, I say, wait, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees