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You couldn’t make it up, the singer states. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her newish partner, and finally the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.

The musician, real name J. Cornish, is known for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, tackling every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The lead track, No Secrets, was launched in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. The cancer. Later follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and Cornish was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while at the same time coping with the disease. A month later she shared the news, and in the start of summer she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “Are you kidding?” look. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every press talk, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Well, not much…’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo follow-up surgery.

We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is dressed in a beige fake-leather jacket, jeans with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and oversized specs. Picture biker chic meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a man with facial hair.” Like the film, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. She is quick, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”

Personal Battles and News

The artist was planning an slot at the awards show when she found a lump. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d reach out on the Monday. By then the singer had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had many commitments.

“Just two weeks before from launching this thing 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, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I jump on the Zoom thinking it’s all going to be positive, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” How did you respond? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ My initial thought 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 scary and bizarre. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just strolled down with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal recently and my one side now looks like a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” A further beam. “At least the nipple remains.”

The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her breasts, she notes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a rough time. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be ideal. Illness changed that.”

Previous Struggles

The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in medical emergencies. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to assume everything is fine. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘You having a good time? Sit down.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with high points for me; a major or strange event has happened to my health.”

She reminisces to her childhood, already beginning performing in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem WPW, which can cause a tachycardia as well as vertigo and heart flutters. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while attending the academy. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”

Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees