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You couldn’t make it up, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after struggling to conceive for ten years, riding high. Then in March she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The musician, birth name Jessica Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, addressing every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, unsuccessful partnerships, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, No Secrets, was launched in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, her song Living My Best Life, was released in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while all the while coping with the disease. A month later she went public, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She shoots me her best “What the fuck?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every press talk, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.

We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Like the film, I say, referencing the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Cornish 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 in the coming year. “I enjoy humor. On stage I basically roast the crowd.”

Medical Challenges and Discovery

Cornish was getting ready for an performance at the ceremony when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it checked, had an scan, and they were, like, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I responded, ‘But I can feel it. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had so much on.

“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be positive, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Oh, that’s not ideal, is it?. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She found the surgery frightening and surreal. “I fear going under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a gown on and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, Cornish says, she’s been blessed. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the surgery. “Cancer sucks, man, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now appears as a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” 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. The implant is larger than before. So inconsiderate! I felt, why make it worse, I’m already having a hard period. Such disrespect! It’s funny because I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”

A History of Health Challenges

Cornish is familiar with health problems. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so upbeat because she’s experienced in health crises. Frequently they align with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to make her recall not to take anything for granted. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘You having a good time? Hold on.’ Since childhood, it has often paired with moments of success for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”

She takes me back to her childhood, already making her debut featuring in the West End in a musical (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition WPW, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward six years, and young Jessica has entered the girl group Soul Deep while studying at the Brit School. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a brain incident. Then when I was ready to debut in the year 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a long period.”

Wow, I say, hold on, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees