This is a blog mostly about vegan or vegan-adjacent things, but every now and then something else feels important enough for me to share with you.
Read on for a love letter to a life well lived and a voice that mattered. I am commemorating Jill Sobule.
Read more below.
I’ve been carrying around a heavy sadness today. Jill Sobule has died in a house fire. She was 66 years old.
It’s hard to put into words just how much she meant to me. Jill has been a constant for more than half my life. A voice, a presence, a spirit. Her music was clever and heartfelt, witty and cutting. She had a way of making you feel less alone in a world that too often tries to keep people like us on the outside.
Jill burst into the mainstream in the mid 90s with I Kissed A Girl. Not the one that came years later and was weirdly homophobic in my opinion, but the original. The one that had charm and nuance and a queer sensibility that made it feel like something just for us. It was a hit all over the place, but especially in Australia, which Jill and I joked about once in conversation. She was genuinely amused by how big that one little song had been Down Under.
I saw Jill perform in all sorts of venues across the globe. The first time was in Las Vegas when she was on the same bill as Donna De Lory, opening for Paula Cole. That gig kicked off years of seeing her again and again. She played intimate rooms and bigger stages, sometimes on her own, sometimes with a group of friends and collaborators. Her shows always felt special.
A few years after seeing her at Shepherd’s Bush Empire as a member of Lloyd Cole and The Negatives, I was in the crowd at a tiny Lloyd gig at The Mint in Los Angeles. Jill was just there, sitting in the audience. It was a proper thrill when Lloyd brought her onstage to sing a few songs. And the Jill Sobule gigs kept coming. I saw her open for Suzanne Vega at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood. I saw her solo at the legendary Largo venue in LA more than once.
One time, my ex and I handed her 30 or 40 dollars after a show because we’d burned some of her songs onto CD-Rs to share with friends. It was a bit goofy, but she was gracious and funny about it in the way only Jill could be. She was irreverent, generous and always real.
Jill loved her mother, Elaine. That love was present in so many of her shows. She’d often call Elaine mid-performance, putting her on speaker phone to say hi or even sing together. After her mum passed away, you could feel how deeply that loss affected her. It came through in her shows and the brief conversations I was fortunate enough to share with her over the years.
Jill Sobule was a proper outsider in the music industry. She had her flashes of fame. That global smash with I Kissed A Girl. Her darkly hilarious track Supermodel featured in the teenage cult classic film, Clueless. A stint writing songs for a kids TV show. But to me, Jill was always more than those shiny moments.
She was a fierce queer activist. She stood up for social justice. She was anti-oppression. She made her own art on her own terms. She worked hard, really hard. On her craft. On the road. On cutting through the industry nonsense. She crowdfunded albums before that was common. She invited fans in. She gave and gave. She played house parties in order to travel and connect. She taught songwriting classes online during COVID lockdowns. She was political and personal in equal measure, and always completely herself.
Jill Sobule’s music helped shape the way I see the world. But her compassion and passion went beyond the music. She showed up. She stayed true. She never shied away from a fight.
I’m sorry this was how you left the world, Jill. It feels so deeply unfair. But you gave so much, and I will carry your songs and your spirit with me always. I will remember you until I can no longer remember anything.
Thank you, Jill.
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