You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an open book, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, miscarriage, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” glance. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is aiming for her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. During performances I frequently joke about the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
The artist was planning an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an test, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they replied, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.
“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have indicated malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness
She found the surgery terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal recently and my one side now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she observes, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Ironically I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Past Medical Issues
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s experienced in health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or shock, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career starring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward several years, and 17-year-old Jess has become part of the female band Soul Deep while attending the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”
Wow, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees
