You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have cancer in her breast.
The artist, real name J. Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with typical candour. The lead track, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then second single, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with her cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, beige footwear and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is aiming for her standup debut next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
She was planning an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an test, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells 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 a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have shown malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to highlight not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already beginning performing in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, 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 lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
