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You can’t imagine it, the singer says. There she was readying for her new album launch in nearly a decade, deeply enamored with her current love, and at long last the mom to a little one after facing fertility challenges for ten years, feeling invincible. Then in March she was found to have a breast cancer diagnosis.

The musician, birth name Jess Cornish, is famous for telling it as it is. The record, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, was intended as an candid account, dealing with every moment of pain she’d endured since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, pregnancy loss, failed relationships, psychological manipulation, mental health struggles) with her usual frankness. The first single, No Secrets, was dropped in the spring. But by then there remained a major undisclosed truth. The illness. Later follow-up track, Living My Best Life, debuted in late spring and she was speaking publicly about how she was thriving, while all the while living with breast cancer. Four weeks after she went public, and in July she underwent breast removal surgery.

She offers me her best “Are you kidding?” expression. “I come out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m conducting every media appearance, and they’re, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and I’m, like, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” the singer has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo cosmetic procedures.

Our interview takes place at a studio in London. She is dressed in a light brown synthetic jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and oversized specs. Imagine motorcycle style meets 1970s Nana Mouskouri. “It seems like I’m in the 70s 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 beams. Jessie is sharp-witted, unfiltered and filter-free. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her standup debut soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

The artist was preparing for an slot at the Baftas when she noticed an abnormality. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an ultrasound, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I’ve got an achy arm and numbness in my fingers whenever I get up.’ And they replied, ‘How about a biopsy?’ It happened on March 28, the following my birthday.” It was a Friday. The physician told her if it was concerning she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had assured herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was simply too inconvenient to get cancer when she had many commitments.

“We’re two weeks away from debuting the project after eight years without an album and an extended break. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she informs me, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ You know that sad tone they use? And she says, ‘Unfortunately but your reports have come back as malignant cells.’” How did you respond? “I replied, ‘Well, that’s not great. That’s not fucking great timing.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘I can’t die because my son needs me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation scary and bizarre. “I hate being put under. They walk you down. During crises you go on a gurney, but this time I just strolled down with a medical attire and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, she notes, she’s been lucky. Without chemo or radio, just the surgery. “Cancer is awful, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I underwent removal a few months back and my affected breast now looks like a odd shape.” A further beam. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The subsequent surgery is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her boobs, she notes, are now “asymmetrical. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, no need to bully me, I’m already having a hard period. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Illness changed that.”

A History of Health Challenges

The singer is no stranger to illness. She feels her perspective on the cancer has been so upbeat because she’s used to health crises. They have often coincided with professional successes, functioning as a wake-up call, or blow, to highlight not to be complacent. “Frankly, I feel life goes, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ Ever since I was a child, it has often paired with moments of success for me; something severe or obscure has impacted my body.”

She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career featuring in the stage in the production (she was chosen at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was diagnosed with the cardiac issue a syndrome, which can cause a rapid pulse as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an IV drip, and being readmitted at night.” She jumps ahead six years, and young Jessica has entered the trio the group while attending the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in 2020 I had a automobile accident and my voice box shifted and I couldn’t sing for a twelve months.”

Oi, I say, wait, I need a moment. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees