You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. At that moment gearing up for her comeback record in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.
The artist, real name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The album, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, mental health struggles) with characteristic openness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly dealing with the disease. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for reconstructive surgery.
We’re at a studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Think biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the picture. “They used to call me that!” She grins. Cornish is sharp-witted, irreverent and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her standup debut soon. “I love making people laugh. During performances I basically roast the fans.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘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 goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ Immediately I felt 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 scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, Cornish says, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my affected breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”
Previous Struggles
She is familiar with health problems. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her 11-year-old self, already beginning starring in the West End in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an drip, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the girl group the group while studying at the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was planning to release songs in recently I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees
