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You can’t imagine it, the singer remarks. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after dealing with conception issues for ten years, riding high. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with a breast cancer diagnosis.

The artist, real name Jess Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was intended as an transparent story, tackling every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicide) with characteristic openness. The first single, her single No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later next release, her song Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while still secretly coping with breast cancer. Subsequently she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She gives me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I come out with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Uh, nothing really’” Cornish has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.

Our interview takes place at a photo studio in the capital. She is sporting a tan faux-leather coat, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine biker chic meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a man with facial hair.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the film. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. She is fast-thinking, irreverent and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is hoping to make her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. During performances I basically roast the crowd.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was preparing for an slot at the awards show when she noticed an abnormality. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I responded, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they suggested, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the post-birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The physician told her if it was serious she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to receive a diagnosis when she had so much on.

“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your test results have indicated malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you go on a gurney, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my bum hanging out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “Cancer sucks, man, but however Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my affected breast now appears as a fruit under fabric.” A further beam. “The nipple was preserved.”

The follow-up procedure is both medical and cosmetic. Her chest, she remarks, are now “asymmetrical. The size doesn’t match. How rude! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. Illness changed that.”

Past Medical Issues

The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or shock, to remind her not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ Ever since I was a child, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”

She takes me back to her childhood, already starting her career featuring in the London theater in a musical (she was selected at the age of nine). That’s when she was told about the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and palpitations. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She fast-forwards several years, and teenage Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while attending the academy. “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 throat was injured and I was unable to vocalize for a twelve months.”

Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees