You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her new album launch in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her newish partner, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The musician, actual name J. Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, her latest release, was intended as an open book, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while at the same time dealing with her cancer. A month later she shared the news, and in July she received surgical treatment.
She shoots me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and big frames. Think motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the movie. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is sharp-witted, bold and blunt. 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. When performing I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had convinced herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had so much on.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after eight years without an album and an extended break. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my one side now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. So rude! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
She is no stranger to illness. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? 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 reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning featuring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a collision and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a year.”
Hey, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
