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You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. At that moment preparing for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for a decade, feeling invincible. Then in March she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.

The musician, actual name Jess Cornish, is famous for speaking her mind. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was meant as an transparent story, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicide) with her usual frankness. The lead track, her single No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Then second single, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time dealing with her cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m conducting every interview, and they inquire, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.

We meet at a photo studio in London. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with detailed white appliqués, beige footwear and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She beams. Cornish is quick, irreverent and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance in the coming year. “I like entertaining. When performing I basically roast the crowd.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

Cornish was planning an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they told me, ‘It appears fine; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I insisted, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and pins and needles in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they said, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was bad news she’d call on the start of the week. By then the singer had assured herself it was okay. The way she describes it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had so much on.

“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I was, like, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she reveals, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your test results have shown malignant cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She viewed the procedure frightening and surreal. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just marched with a gown on and my rear exposed. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “Cancer is awful, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my one side now resembles a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The next operation is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she observes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. How rude! I felt, 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 perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. My plans were disrupted.”

Previous Struggles

The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She believes her outlook on her diagnosis has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. They have often coincided with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Truly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”

She recalls to her youth, already beginning starring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She fast-forwards half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the Brit School. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was about to put out music in the year 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a year.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees