You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. At that moment readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in March she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, real name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was intended as an open book, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with typical candour. The first single, her single No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with breast cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in the start of summer she received surgical treatment.
She offers me her best “What the fuck?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to postpone shows because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
We meet at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Think rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “They used to call me that!” She grins. She is fast-thinking, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the audience.”
Personal Battles and News
She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d reach out on the Monday. By then she had assured herself it was fine. The way she tells it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.
“We’re two weeks away from releasing the album 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 log in believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have indicated high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She viewed the procedure scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but however I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal a few months back and my right breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”
The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so upbeat because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career performing in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I rehearsed between visits on an drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a year.”
Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
