You can’t imagine it, the singer says. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, dealing with every moment of pain she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with the disease. Four weeks after she went public, and in early July she received surgical treatment.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her standup debut next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was getting ready for an slot at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘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 bad news she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy recently and my right breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her childhood, already making her debut performing in the stage in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
