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You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her first album release in nearly a decade, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, on top of the world. Suddenly in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is renowned for speaking her mind. The album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, addressing every bit of hardship she’d faced since she last made an album (endometrial issues, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicide) with her usual frankness. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. Her diagnosis. Then follow-up track, the upbeat Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and the artist was giving interviews about how she was thriving, while all the while dealing with breast cancer. A month later she disclosed her condition, and in early July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She gives me her best “Seriously?” look. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they’re, like, ‘Any updates?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to postpone shows because she’s still waiting for cosmetic procedures.

We meet at a studio in London. She is sporting a light brown synthetic jacket, jeans with ornate white designs, off-white boots and big frames. Imagine rocker vibe meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the seventies and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” Easy Rider, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She grins. Jessie is fast-thinking, bold and direct. She says she has always fancied doing comedy and is planning to attempt her first comedy performance next year. “I love making people laugh. When performing I frequently joke about the fans.”

Personal Battles and News

The artist was planning an appearance at the Baftas when she discovered a mass. “I quickly sought to get it looked at, had an scan, and they said, ‘It seems benign; you’ve got really good dense breast tissue.’ And I responded, ‘However, it’s there. My arm hurts and tingling in my hands whenever I rise.’ And they said, ‘How about a biopsy?’ The date was March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the Monday. By then the singer had convinced herself it was okay. The way she tells it, it was inopportune to face illness when she had a busy schedule.

“It was a fortnight prior from releasing the album after eight years without an album and four years without a single. And she [the doctor] texted and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom expecting it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘I’m so, so sorry but your reports have indicated aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘Well, that’s not great. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I have to survive for my boy.’”

I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself

She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. In urgent cases you roll down in a bed, but then I just walked with a medical attire and my backside out. You feel like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror.” But, she notes, she’s been blessed. Without chemo or radio, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet Luckily it was detected early. I had the mastectomy four months ago and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is both medical and cosmetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “different sizes. They didn’t do an implant as small as my original. So inconsiderate! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d avoid breast surgery because I’ve got OCD, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”

Past Medical Issues

Cornish is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her attitude toward illness has been so optimistic because she’s familiar with health crises. Frequently they align with peak moments, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to take anything for granted. “Honestly, I feel life goes, ‘Enjoying yourself? Take a seat.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside achievements for me; something severe or obscure has affected my well-being.”

She takes me back to her 11-year-old self, already beginning featuring in the stage in Whistle Down the Wind (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was found to have the cardiac issue Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as dizziness and heart flutters. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an intravenous line, and being readmitted at night.” She skips forward half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has entered the female band the group while attending the performing arts school. “I just got my first record deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was about to put out music in 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”

Hey, I say, slow down, I am overwhelmed. At just 17? She nods|agrees