You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after facing fertility challenges for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was told she had breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, the provocatively titled album, was intended as an open book, addressing every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with her cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she had a mastectomy.
She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Cornish is fast-thinking, irreverent and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance soon. “I enjoy humor. During performances I frequently joke about the fans.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
She was planning an appearance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had many commitments.
“It was a fortnight prior from launching this thing after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call believing it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great 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. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but this time I just marched with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. The surgery happened four months ago and my affected breast now appears as a odd shape.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”
The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her breasts, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I reflected, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be flawless. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Previous Struggles
Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”
She reminisces to her youth, already making her debut performing in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a year.”
Oi, I say, hold on, I am overwhelmed. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
