On May 1, 2025, the singer-songwriter world lost one of its most irrepressible and beloved free spirits when Jill Sobule died in a house fire while on tour in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sobule, 66, was best known, in her own words, as a \u201ctwo-hit wonder\u201d: for \u201cI Kissed a Girl,\u201d from 1995, the first overtly gay-themed song to reach the Top 20 (13 years before Katy Perry\u2019s song of the same title); and \u201cSupermodel,\u201d featured in the Clueless <\/em>movie soundtrack. But those were just a tiny taste of Sobule\u2019s catalog of superb folk-pop-rock songs\u2014packed with offbeat storylines, mischievous humor, and killer hooks. Along the way in her 35-year career, she was also a pioneer in the music industry she sometimes satirized, as one of the early independent artists to crowdfund an album release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Growing up in Denver, Sobule had diverse inspirations, from the Beatles to Sly Stone to John Prine. When I interviewed her for Acoustic Guitar<\/em> in 1997, just after she released Happy Town<\/a>,<\/em> she described her songs as rooted in storytelling. \u201cI write like I\u2019m writing a story,\u201d she said. \u201cI always start with verses, where a lot of people begin with, \u2018OK, I\u2019ve got a really good hook, and let\u2019s figure out how we can use this hook.\u2019 [For me] the chorus is usually the last thing. It\u2019s more narrative.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sobule\u2019s songs introduced all sorts of vivid characters, such as the seemingly conservative shoe store manager who turns into a leather-clad biker after hours in \u201cKaren by Night,\u201d the overlooked dreamer struggling through school days in \u201cUnderachiever,\u201d or the aspiring actor posing as a superhero for tips on the streets of Hollywood in \u201cSpiderman.\u201d No one wrote more authentically and movingly about the misfits and outcasts of adolescence than Sobule. She ultimately turned a body of songs about middle school into an autobiographical musical, F*ck 7th Grade<\/em>, that premiered in New York City in 2022. (Listen to a sampling of her songs in this playlist<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n