Jill Sobule, the singer/songwriter whose hits included “I Kissed A Girl” and the “satirical gem” “Supermodel” from the “Clueless” soundtrack, has died. She was 66.
Sobule’s representatives announced the news in a May 1 press release posted on her Facebook page, which revealed her cause of death was “a house fire early this morning.”
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that the fatal house fire happened in Woodbury, located on the outskirts of Saint Paul, Minnesota. In a statement shared on Facebook, Woodbury Public Safety said that “responders observed the house fully engulfed in flames.”
“The homeowners reported one person was possibly still inside the home. Woodbury firefighters began actively fighting the fire while also searching for the missing person,” the statement read. “Tragically, the missing female, in her 60s, was located deceased inside the home. Woodbury Public Safety remains on scene actively investigating the cause of the fire.”
USA TODAY has reached out to the Woodbury Public Safety Department for more information.
The press release from Sobule’s representatives included remembrances from her manager, booking agent and attorney. Manager John Porter paid tribute to her as “force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture.”
In lieu of her scheduled show at Swallow Hill Music in Denver on May 2, there will instead be “an informal gathering” hosted by her friend, 105.5 The Colorado Sound host Rob Bostwick. “Folks are encouraged to join their fellow Jill friends and fans to share a story or song,” the press release noted.
A memorial service will take place “later this summer.”
‘I Kissed A Girl’ was ‘first ever openly queer-themed’ single to chart
The Denver-born Sobule was scheduled to embark on a three-show “Colorado world tour” in May, with summer performances taking her to the East Coast, Midwest and West Coast. Her last performance was seemingly as a supporting act for The Fixx on April 25 at Illinois’ Arcada Theatre.
On Sobule’s website, “I Kissed A Girl” is described as “the first ever openly queer-themed Billboard Top 20 record.” Throughout the three decades of her musical career, she wrote tracks inspired by “such topics as the death penalty, anorexia nervosa, shoplifting, reproduction, the French Resistance, adolescent malaise, LGBTQ issues, and the Christian Right.” She also produced an off-Broadway autobiographical musical, which had four separate runs in three years.
In her 2022 New York Times review, theater critic Laura Collins-Hughes described Sobule as “enchanting.”
“I wish I would have said to all of them: it’s a big ol’ gay gay song,” she told the crowd during an October 2022 performance, per Collins-Hughes’ review. “But I didn’t. I was too scared. I wanted to do the smart thing. I wanted to be arty and transgressive, but I wanted to sell records. The compromising got me nowhere. And then I couldn’t stand my own song.”
Jill Sobule ‘started loving music again’ with her last album
Sobule’s first album, “Things Here Are Different,” came out in 1990. But as her website notes, her second album – 1995’s self-titled “Jill Sobule” – “brought her mainstream commercial and critical success,” especially with its singles “I Kissed A Girl” and “Supermodel.” Her most recent album, “Nostalgia Kills,” came out in 2018.
Speaking with Billboard before the record’s release, Sobule admitted that for years she “went through an extended period of time of finding other things and avoiding doing a new album.”
“There were things that happened in my life — the death of a parent, a breakup, a move. I was my own procrastinatrix, is what I call it,” she said. “But I think those kind of jostle you back into the creative mode, and I started loving music again — loving listening, loving writing and the original spirit of why I did this in the first place, I suppose.”
Sobule is survived by her brother and her sister-in-law, James and Mary Ellen Sobule, her nephews and “numerous beloved cousins and countless friends.”
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