Jill Sobule Passes away

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Jill Sobule, the groundbreaking singer-songwriter and activist whose 1995 song “I Kissed a Girl” is widely considered the first openly gay-themed song to crack the Billboard Top 20, died in a Minneapolis house fire early Thursday morning, her rep confirmed. She was 66. 
 


Sobule’s unusually diverse three-decade/12-album career included that song as well as “Supermodel” from the film “Clueless” and, more recently, the Drama Desk-nominated autobiographical musical “f**k 7th Grade,” which enjoyed four theatrical runs in three years. The original cast recording of the show is set to be released on June 6, alongside a special 30th anniversary reissue of her self-titled album, which features “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel”.

She was scheduled to perform in her native Denver tomorrow night at at Swallow Hill Music’s Tuft Theater, “Jill Sobule presents: Songs From F*ck 7th Grade & More”; instead there will be an informal gathering hosted by her friend Ron Bostwick from 105.5 FM.

Her manager, John Porter, said in a statement: “Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture. I was having so much fun working with her. I lost a client and a friend today. I hope her music, memory, & legacy continue to live on and inspire others.”
 


Ken Hertz, her longtime attorney, said, “Jill wasn’t just a client. She was family to us. She showed up for every birth, every birthday, and every holiday. She performed at our daughter’s wedding, and I was her ‘tech’ when she performed by Zoom from our living room (while living with us) during the pandemic.”
 


Born in Denver in 1959, Sobule released her Todd Rundgren-produced debut album, “Things Here Are Different,” in 1990; a second album was recorded with British singer Joe Jackson, but was not released. She signed with Atlantic in 1995 and enjoyed hits with her self-titled album, but the pop format constricted the wide-ranging topics and ideas of her often-witty songs — which have ranged from capital punishment to shoplifting, from anorexia to the MAGA movement — and over the following years she released music on independent labels while working on theatrical and television projects, including the theme for the Nickelodeon show “Unfabulous.”

In 2008 she became a pioneer of using crowdfunding to release albums, offering patrons everything from a free download along with the physical copy of the album (for $10) to the opportunity to sing on the record ($10,000). In less than two months she had reached her $75,000 target goal, via more than 500 donations, and released the album, “California Years,” in 2009 on her Pinko Records label. She used crowdfunding again a decade later for her “Nostalgia Kills” album.

A formal memorial celebrating her life and legacy will take place during the summer, her rep said.

Sobule, who grew up as the only Jewish student at her Catholic school in Denver, broke new ground when she released “I Kissed A Girl” in 1995. The song chronicled a same-sex flirtation between two women and arrived at a time when queer narratives were rare in pop culture. Sobule, who later came out as bisexual, said it was the kind of song she wished she had been able to hear when she was a teen.

Sobule grew up as what she told Lilith Magazine was as a “Denver Jew, third generation from the Old Country,” saying that her family practiced a secular and perhaps sanitized version of Judaism. “We were to Judaism,” she told the magazine in 2023, “what Olive Garden was to Italian restaurants.”

She also recalled that her first stage performance was as “Miss Hanukkah and Queen Esther” in a school production when she was in first grade. After her turn atop the pop charts, she would return to Jewish themes in a wide array of musical and stage projects.

She was a repeat participant in the Downtown Seder, a musical Passover performance held annually in New York City.

She performed in a revue of “Fiddler on the Roof” songs at a Jewish music festival in New York in 2007 alongside the Klezmatics and Theodore Bikel, who was synonymous with the lead character Tevye.

And in 2016, she made headlines by composing the music for a new staging of “Yentl,” the Isaac Bashevis Singer story about a gender-bending yeshiva student propelled into the popular consciousness by the 1986 movie of the same name starring Barbra Streisand.

Sobule said she valued “Yentl” as a depiction of transgenderism but had been struck by learning that Singer was unhappy with the movie and sought to address his objections by having the music come from “a Jewish chorus” instead of being sung by the characters.

“I think he would approve of my music,” she told NPR at the time. “I really do, because it keeps the spirit of the play, and it has a sense of humor. I think he actually would like it because it doesn’t feel intrusive.”

And in 2022, she played both a cantor and the rabbi’s wife in “A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill,” a staging of the true story of the New Jersey rabbi convicted of arranging the murder of his wife. In a play abhorred by the family of the real victim, she delivered the “standout performance,” according to a review in the Los Angeles Times. (The rabbi died last year.)

Sobule’s latest project was “F–k 7th Grade,” an autobiographical musical about being queer in middle school that was well reviewed during its off-Broadway run in New York City. She had been scheduled to perform songs from the musical in Denver on Friday, in a venue that will now host an informal memorial service.