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You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was readying for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and at long last the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter, birth name Jessica Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was supposed to be an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, the song No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, came out in late spring and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was enjoying life to the fullest, while still secretly living with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I release with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.

Our interview takes place at a photography studio in the capital. She is wearing a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, referencing the picture. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She beams. Jessie is quick, irreverent and direct. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance next year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the fans.”

Personal Battles and News

The artist was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they told me, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. My arm hurts and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.

“We’re two weeks away from launching this thing after eight years without an album and no new music. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I log in expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ That sympathetic voice? And she continues, ‘Unfortunately but your test results 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.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I fear going under. They lead you. During crises you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked 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 lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” She smiles again. “At least the nipple remains.”

The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Ironically I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be ideal. Cancer ruined that plan.”

A History of Health Challenges

She is no stranger to illness. She believes her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to assume everything is fine. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has consistently accompanied high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

She takes me back to her youth, already making her debut performing in the London theater in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White 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 half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the girl group the group while enrolled in the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a collision and my larynx moved up and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”

Oi, I say, slow down, I can’t keep up. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees