You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, actual name J. Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The LP, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicide) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with breast cancer. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Picture biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an performance 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, ‘However, it’s there. I’ve got an achy arm and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album 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 jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be good, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. You’re escorted. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but now I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside peak moments, acting as a reminder, or shock, to highlight not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward six years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band the group while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
