You can’t imagine it, the singer says. At that moment preparing for her comeback record in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in March she was told she had breast cancer.
The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an open book, tackling every bit of hardship she’d endured since she last worked on songs (endometriosis, losing a baby, broken romances, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and blunt. She says she has always been interested in humor and is hoping to make her initial standup show in the coming year. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was planning an performance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d call on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a medical attire and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast 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 breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Ironically I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. Many times they occur alongside career highs, acting as a reminder, or blow, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside moments of success for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the London theater in a musical (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 dizziness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
