You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was readying for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Then in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name J. Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The record, her latest release, was intended as an open book, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then next release, Living My Best Life, was released in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with her cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the crowd.”
Personal Battles and News
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have indicated malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the procedure. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? 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 takes me back to her childhood, already beginning performing in the London theater in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has entered the female band the group while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
