🔗 Share this article

You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, ecstatically in love with her recent boyfriend, and finally the mom to a little one after dealing with conception issues for a decade, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was told she had cancer in her breast.

The musician, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for telling it as it is. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an transparent story, dealing with every bit of hardship she’d experienced since she last recorded music (endometriosis, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in April. But by then there was a mighty secret. The illness. Then next release, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was talking to press about how she was thriving, while at the same time living with breast cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.

She shoots me her best “Seriously?” expression. “I put out with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every media appearance, and they inquire, ‘What’s happening?’ and I answer, ‘Well, not much…’” Cornish has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for follow-up surgery.

We meet at a photography studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with elaborate white patches, beige footwear and big frames. Picture motorcycle style meets vintage look. “As if I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, thinking of the movie. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. She is quick, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is planning to attempt her initial standup show soon. “I love making people laugh. On stage I basically roast the fans.”

Personal Battles and News

She was getting ready for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it checked, had an scan, and they said, ‘It looks like nothing; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and pins and needles in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ The date was March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was serious she’d reach out on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she describes it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.

“Just two weeks before from debuting the project after years away and no new music. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘A video call, likely minor.’ So I join the call expecting it’s all going to be good, and she informs me, ‘Please take a seat.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What was your reaction? “I said, ‘Well, that’s not great. What awful timing.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you go on a gurney, but now I just strolled down with a gown on and my bum hanging out. It felt surreal.” But, she notes, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” Another grin. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she remarks, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I reflected, why make it worse, I’m already having a rough time. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be flawless. My plans were disrupted.”

A History of Health Challenges

Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s familiar with health crises. They have often coincided with career highs, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”

She reminisces to her youth, already starting her career featuring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was selected 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 dizziness and palpitations. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead several years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band the group while attending the performing arts school. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my larynx moved up and I lost my voice for a long period.”

Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. At just 17? She nods|agrees