You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her comeback record in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for being brutally honest. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d endured since she last recorded music (endometriosis, losing a baby, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with typical candour. The first single, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in May and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while all the while living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She offers me her best “Seriously?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a photo studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I basically roast the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
Cornish was planning an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was serious she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had convinced herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but then I just walked with a gown on and my rear exposed. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but you know what? Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s used to medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She recalls to her childhood, already starting her career featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and young Jessica has joined the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, slow down, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
