You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. At that moment gearing up for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then next release, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with the disease. Subsequently she disclosed her condition, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.
We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. She is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her standup debut in the coming year. “I like entertaining. During performances I often tease the fans.”
Personal Battles and News
Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d call on the Monday. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to face illness when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just strolled down with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal four months ago and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”
Previous Struggles
She is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the London theater in the production (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and teenage Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
