Jill Sobule has died. A prolific singer-songwriter who came to mainstream prominence in the 1990s—most notably with her self-titled sophomore album in 1995, which featured hits like “I Kissed A Girl” and “Supermodel”—Sobule was celebrated by fans more for the boxes she didn’t fit in than the ones she did, charting an individualistic trek through the worlds of folk and pop. An innovator in the Wild West of music funding in the early internet era, Sobule was one of the first artists to successfully crowdfund an album; she also continued to tour and release new music into the 2020s, most recently working on her autobiographical musical F*ck 7th Grade. Per a press statement put out by her representatives on Thursday night, Sobule died in a house fire on the morning of May 1. She was 66.
Born in Denver, Sobule began pursuing music from an early age, inspired by an older brother who played in a neighborhood band. She released her first album, the Todd Rundgren-produced Things Here Are Different, in 1990, to minimal public notice. (Years later, Sobule wrote about coming to love the album slowly over the years; she also talked about recording at Rundgren’s “compound,” including an invitation to a Labor Day party that was “a gathering of around fifty of his friends to watch the Jerry Lewis telethon all day and night…on mushrooms.” A prolific blogger, Sobule was a deft hand at employing the same wit in her storytelling as frequently appeared in her lyrics.)
1995 saw the release of Jill Sobule, her most commercially successful effort. (Especially once “Supermodel,” a darkly satirical take on beauty standards in a pop-punk wrapper, landed on the Clueless soundtrack, and was added to subsequent versions of the album.) The major breakout hit was “I Kissed A Girl,” which also featured a much-played music video featuring Fabio as the romance novel heartthrob who fails to notice his girlfriend has picked up some new interests; both the lyrics, and the video, showcased Sobule’s interest in winking at the audience from within the bounds of the singer-songwriter model. (Years later, some tongue-in-cheek comments about the Katy Perry song of the same name showcased her slightly exasperated amusement at a career-long tendency to be over-shadowed by less thoughtfully verbal artists.)
Sobule followed Jill Sobule with 1997’s Happy Town, which more-or-less set the template for the rest of her career: Inventive, clever, and eclectic blends of music and lyrics that produced strong reviews from critics, but little in the way of commercial success. (One of the album’s most ear-catching and attention-grabbing songs: “Attic,” in which Sobule acerbically draws parallels between romantic love and the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands.) In her own words, Sobule was allergic to the pressures of money-driven songwriting, instead cultivating a small but highly loyal fan base in love with her densely nested narratives, jokes, and melodies, and little in the way of radio play. Hence, perhaps, why she became one of music’s first big crowdfunding success stories: In 2008, sick of the “usual method” of making records (“Going with a label, who advances you the money, then ends up doing a shitty job, and no one ever hears it, and you still remain broke”), Sobule launched a site inviting fans to pay for her next album in exchange for various rewards and gifts. (Essentially the Kickstarter model, a year before the service went live.) Sobule ended up funding the $75,000 asking price within two months, resulting in 2009’s California Years.
As the 2000s progressed, Sobule charted a typically creative path through the entertainment landscape: A brief stint writing music for Emma Roberts’ Nickelodeon sitcom here, a long-running collaboration with former Saturday Night Live star Julia Sweeney here. Her music tended to pop up in places where creatively minded people with senses of humor congregated (and not just at the TED conference, where she was a frequent performer): In 2019, she wrote about being delighted to be featured (as both a joke punchline, and an artist) in an episode of The Simpsons, where she performed an ode to woodchopping called “Lumberjill.” Through it all, she never flinched from her commitment to writing songs that stuck to her values, creating music that was as socially conscious as it was scathingly funny.
Sobule (who’d been gearing up for a vinyl re-issue of Jill Sobule this June) had previously been set to perform a show at Denver’s Tufts Theater on Friday night, showcasing songs from F*ck 7th Grade; that show has now been converted into a commemoration of her life and music. Per the press statement, “There will be a formal memorial celebrating her life and legacy later this summer.”
