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You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was preparing for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.

The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The LP, her latest release, was meant as an candid account, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, her single No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Four weeks after she disclosed her condition, and in July she had a mastectomy.

She shoots me her best “Seriously?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s awaiting reconstructive surgery.

We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Like the film, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She beams. Jessie is quick, bold and blunt. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut next year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

The artist was getting ready for an appearance at the ceremony when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it examined, had an ultrasound, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the Monday. By then she had convinced herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had many commitments.

“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have shown aggressive cancer.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs 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 dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal four months ago and my right breast now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”

The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”

A History of Health Challenges

Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, acting as a reminder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”

She takes me back to her youth, already beginning performing in the West End in the production (she was chosen at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She fast-forwards six years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”

Hey, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees