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You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, deeply enamored with her recent boyfriend, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter, actual name Jess Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an open book, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last worked on songs (endometrial issues, pregnancy loss, broken romances, gaslighting, suicide) with characteristic openness. The lead track, the song No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there existed a huge secret. The illness. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in early July she received surgical treatment.

She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘Any updates?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” she has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting cosmetic procedures.

We’re at a photo studio in London. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” Easy Rider, I say, thinking of the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She grins. Jessie is sharp-witted, bold and filter-free. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the fans.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was planning an appearance at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It appears fine; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to receive a diagnosis when she had many commitments.

“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown malignant cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but then I just strolled down with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but however Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now appears as a odd shape.” Another grin. “At least the nipple remains.”

The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she observes, are now “different sizes. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

Previous Struggles

Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in physical challenges. Many times they occur alongside career highs, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel fate says, ‘Enjoying yourself? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with high points for me; a serious or unusual issue has impacted my body.”

She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already beginning performing in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about 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 being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and teenage Jess has joined the girl group Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a car crash and my voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees