You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and finally the parent to a young child after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with cancer in her breast.
The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was supposed to be an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Then follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly coping with her cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting 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 awaiting cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a studio in London. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, cream boots and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, recalling the picture. “They used to call me that!” She beams. She is quick, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her standup debut in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I frequently joke about the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells 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 eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They lead you. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. So inconsiderate! I thought, no need to bully me, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut starring 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 heart condition a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
