Jill Sobule is a force of nature and human rights advocate who’s music is woven into our culture
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Ten Plus Things To Know About Jill's career (so far, this WHOLE LIST a work in progress, from her pen:
I’m from Denver, Colorado. My first claim to fame was winning the Denver Nuggets poster contest when I was ten. My dad really drew it, but…I colored it in. I met all the players at half time and won an AM/FM clock radio. That radio was shit and blew up.
My grandfather was in the circus with future heavy weight boxing champ, Jack Dempsey. He was also in the liquor business during prohibition.
The night before recording my first record. Todd Rundgren, my producer, hosted his annual labor day, watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon, party. All the guests did mushrooms the entire weekend. I was stuck there and had peer pressure. The album had mixed results..
“I Kissed a Girl” was was the first blatantly gay song to hit the Billboard charts. . At every show I play, I get at least one or two people who seek me out to tell me how the song helped them when they were growing up. My insidious gay agenda worked. The best part of having Katy Perry use my title was that a bunch of thirteen year olds accidentally bought my version online.
My musical memoir, F*ck 7th Grade was a NYT critics pick and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. We didn’t win - we, a no budget off off off Broadway show, were up against big Broadway productions. We were cool.
F*ck 7th Grade is not my first entry into musical theater. I collaborated with Elise Thoron on Prozak and The Platypus (2008); wrote songs for the re-staging of the 1975 Broadway play Yentl (Sarasota Theater, 2014); composed music for The Civilians’ stage adaptation of the movie “Times Square” (2018). I have been currently working on a pulpy riot grrrl adaptation of The Scarlet Letter with an all-female and gender-queer cast, “Crimson Lit: Scarlet Letter Setlist. I also got my first stage acting role at LA’s Geffen Playhouse in a production of a the true-crime musical Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill (2022). It didn’t get great review, but they loved me!
Between 2004-2007, I did the Jill and Julia show with Julia Sweeney (SNL alum and genius story teller). We would have continued, but Julia was kind of tired of talking about herself. I’m not tired yet. We were regulars at TED
I have got to tour with some of my heroes like: X, John Prine, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Jackson, Paul Weller, Boots Reilly, Tom Morello, Steve Earle. I opened up for Warren Zevon during his last two tours. I was a member of Lloyd Cole and the Negatives.I once got to, get this, open up for Nina Simone! I was once onstage singing with James Brown and Sir Paul and.Hanson! I feel like Zelig.
I kind of created Kickstarter. Really! In 2008, knowing that no label would sign me, I had the idea of not just asking my fans for financial help, but in return, I made up a list of gifts and services -from “polished rock” to “weapons grade plutonium”. One level was where the donor would sing a duet with me. Autotune helped. Anyway, it was a big to do. I got a lot of publicity, raised a lot of money, and the folks who were about to launch Kickstarter, asked me for advice. Why didn’t I think to make a business out of it.
In 2014, I partnered with Harper’s Magazine (when it was cool), to write a kind of literary collaboration featuring lyrics by fancy writers like David Hajdu, Jonathan Lethem,, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Lucy Sante. “Dottie’s Charms” wasn’t a smash hit, but what was.
In 2023, I had brain surgery for my essential tremor. I am bionic now . During the surgery, I had to be awake. I had my guitar and performed “Supermodel” for the doctor and the nurses while my head was open. They wildly applauded. But it was not my best performance.
Just other little factoids: I did the music for the Nickelodeon show. Unfabulous. Lisa and Marge Simpson Love me. Beavis and Buthead too. I’ll stop now.
Jill Tribute Shows
HI Friends!
Jill's friends and family are organizing a series of tribute shows which will benefit the pinko causes Jill wrote and sang about . Things are being organized in very organic way. We are hoping that you can join us and sing-a-long at these events.
Let's keep Jill's songs with us!
Love, Jill's people
Huge Title
biography
Jill Sobule has released a dozen of albums spanning three decades of recording, tackling such topics as the death penalty, anorexia nervosa, shoplifting, reproduction, the French Resistance, adolescent malaise, LGBTQ issues, and the Christian Right, to name a few - with her trademark wit and aplomb.
The Denver-born songwriter/guitarist/singer's work is at once deeply personal and socially conscious, seriously funny and derisively tragic. While her songs cover expansive thematic ground, they benefit greatly from Jill’s subtle intelligence and skillful light-handedness. No sloganeering flag-and-fist waving here, but rather portrait-&-story songs about human beings, real and imagined, which allow us to step back from the issues they tackle, be they individual or societal, and to relate to them as we would to a close friend.
On stage, she entertains, amuses, provokes, and more often than not, takes her audiences on an emotional roller coaster, from comedy to pathos in a few bars of music, often within the same song.
Jill Sobule’s recording career began in 1990 with the album Things Here Are Different (MCA), produced by Todd Rundgren. Radio took notice thanks to the single’s “Too Cool To Fall In Love.” Her 1995 self-titled album (Atlantic) brought her mainstream commercial and critical success with two hit singles: the satirical gem “Supermodel” from the movie Clueless and “I Kissed A Girl” (the original), the first ever openly queer-themed Billboard Top 20 record.
For her most recent album, the Ben Lee-produced Nostalgia Kills, Sobule turned her warm wit and laser-focused poet’s eye on herself more than ever before. For all its graceful, funny, and heartbreaking explorations of awkward youth and grown-up regrets, Nostalgia Kills is as of-the-moment as anything in Jill Sobule’s catalog. Through her own experiences, she explores issues our society still collectively struggles with (LGBTQ rights, teen mental health, our unhealthy obsession with staying forever young) and gently skewers our tendency to dwell on the past at the expense of addressing the present.
Sobule has performed with Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Morello, Warren Zevon, and John Doe. She inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. She has shared billing with Don Henley, Joe Jackson, Warren Zevon, the influential LA punk band X, and Lloyd Cole & The Negatives. She regularly co-stars with comedian/actress/author/SNL alumni Julia Sweeney in their Jill & Julia Show, an unusual and mesmerizing combination of song and storytelling. A road warrior, she plays more than 100 shows a year.
In November of 2019 Jill sang a song as herself on an episode of the Simpsons. Jill’s latest project is her New York Times Critics pick, Drama Desk nominated autobiographical musical “Fuck 7th Grade” which premiered at the Wild Project in 2022; had a remount in the Winter of 2023; and in November of 2024.