You wouldn’t believe it, the singer remarks. There she was readying for her first album release in nearly a decade, ecstatically in love with her current love, and finally the mother of a toddler after facing fertility challenges for a decade, on top of the world. Suddenly in spring she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is famous for being brutally honest. The LP, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, addressing every ounce of devastation she’d faced since she last recorded music (endometrial issues, miscarriage, broken romances, emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts) with her usual frankness. The initial release, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, was released in May and she was speaking publicly about how she was living her best life, while all the while living with the disease. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She gives me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every press talk, and they ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.
We meet at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, blue jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and large glasses. Picture rocker vibe meets vintage look. “It seems like I’m in the 70s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the film. “I was nicknamed that in school!” She smiles. She is sharp-witted, unfiltered and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is planning to attempt her initial standup show soon. “I like entertaining. On stage I often tease the crowd.”
Health Struggles and Diagnosis
The artist was preparing for an appearance at the awards show when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I insisted, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ It happened on March 28, the day after my birthday.” It was a Friday. The doctor told her if it was concerning she’d call on the start of the week. By then she had convinced herself it was okay. The way she explains it, it was inopportune to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.
“Just two weeks before from releasing the album after a long hiatus and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Are you free at six?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I join the call thinking it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she continues, ‘I regret to inform you but your biopsy results have come back as high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. That’s not fucking great timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They lead you. You know when you have emergency surgery you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a gown on and my bum hanging out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the op. “It’s terrible, but you know what? I’m grateful it was caught soon. The surgery happened a few months back and my right breast now resembles a grapefruit under a tight bedsheet.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The next operation is for health and appearance. Her boobs, she notes, are now “uneven. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. That’s impolite! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. So rude! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”
A History of Health Challenges
The singer is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so positive because she’s used to physical challenges. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to remind her not to take anything for granted. “Truly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has consistently accompanied achievements for me; a major or strange event has impacted my body.”
She recalls to her 11-year-old self, already starting her career featuring in the London theater in Whistle Down the Wind (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was told about the medical problem Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a tachycardia as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has become part of the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in 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 voice box shifted and I was unable to vocalize for a year.”
Wow, I say, wait, I am overwhelmed. You really had a stroke at 17? She nods|agrees
