‘It has made me live life more’: Jessica Cornish on cancer, career returns and cracking China

You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her comeback record in eight years, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, riding high. Then in March she was told she had cancer in her breast.

The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The record, her latest release, was intended as an candid account, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, unsuccessful partnerships, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then second single, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while still secretly dealing with the disease. Subsequently she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.

She shoots me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I’m, like, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.

We meet at a studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, jeans with ornate white designs, cream boots and big frames. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Jessie is fast-thinking, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease the crowd.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I quickly sought to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had persuaded herself it was nothing. The way she tells it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had many commitments.

“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after years away and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she says, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

Men have called me difficult because I’m a strong person who understands who I am

She viewed the procedure terrifying and absurd. “I fear going under. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been blessed. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now resembles a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The next operation is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “different sizes. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”

A History of Health Challenges

Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”

She recalls to her childhood, already beginning featuring in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has entered the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a long period.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees