By Philissa Cramer
Jill Sobule, the Jewish singer-songwriter whose hit “I Kissed A Girl” broke new ground on the pop charts in the mid-1990s, died in a house fire on Thursday, May 1, outside of of Minneapolis. She was 66.
A Denver native, Sobule was due to perform in her hometown on Friday.
Police in the Minneapolis suburb of Woodbury are investigating the cause of the fire, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
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 May of 1995. The song chronicled a same-sex flirtation between two women and arrived at a time when queer narratives were rare in pop culture.
“I Kissed a Girl” is considered the first song with openly-gay themes to crack the Billboard Top 20.
The music video for the song — which in 2008 received renewed attention due to the release of Katy Perry’s hit of the same name — featured Italian model Fabio playing Sobule’s love interest.
Sobule, who later came out as bisexual, said it was the kind of song she wished she was able to hear when she was a teen.
The same year, her song “Supermodel,” satirizing teen culture, found success after it was included in the hit movie “Clueless,” starring Jewish actress Alicia Silverstone. (The movie, focused on a Jewish teenager in Beverly Hills, is getting a new life now with a TV series.).
In her eight studio albums of original songs, Sobule touched on such subjects as her Jewish heritage and teenage battles with depression and anorexia. Her music was often cited as reminiscent of Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Harry Chapin.
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 on 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.
Sobule 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, Fred Neulander, died last year.)
Sobule’s latest project was “F–k 7th Grade,” an autobiographical musical about being queer in middle school that was well-received 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.
John Porter, Sobule’s manager, characterized her as a “force of nature and [a] human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture. … I lost a client & a friend today. I hope her music, memory, & legacy continue to live on and inspire others.”
Sobule is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, James and Mary Ellen Sobule, along with her nephews and cousins.
Philissa Cramer is the editor in chief of the JTA global Jewish news source.
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