1. Jill Susan Sobule was an American singer-songwriter best known for the 1995 single "I Kissed a Girl", and "Supermodel" from the soundtrack of the 1995 film Clueless.
22 Facts About Jill Sobule
1. 2.
Jill Sobule's folk-inflected compositions alternate between ironic, story-driven character studies and emotive ballads, a duality reminiscent of such 1970s American songwriters as Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson, Loudon Wainwright III, Harry Chapin, and Randy Newman.
3.
In 2009, Jill Sobule released California Years, an album funded entirely by fan donations, making her an early pioneer of crowdfunding.
4.
Jill Sobule was born into a secular Jewish family in Denver, Colorado on January 16,1959.
5.
Jill Sobule's father, Marvin Lee, was a veterinarian, and her mother, Elaine, was a musician.
6.
Jill Sobule attended St Mary's Academy, while she was the only Jew there, she played the guitar during mass.
7.
Jill Sobule enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder to study political science and spent her junior year in Seville, Spain, where she first performed her public gigs.
8.
Jill Sobule later returned to the US and dropped out from UC-Boulder to pursue a music career.
9.
Jill Sobule released eight studio albums of original songs, four EPs, and a greatest hits compilation album.
10.
Jill Sobule's output include original songs available only via the Internet, a cover of Robert Earl Keen's Christmas novelty track "Merry Christmas from the Family," and a version of the late Warren Zevon's "Don't Let Us Get Sick" included on both Jill Sobule's acoustic album and on a posthumous Zevon tribute record.
11.
The Jill Sobule album seemed to establish Sobule's commercial prospects, but her third album slowed that momentum while setting what was the musical and production patterns for the rest of her career.
12.
Jill Sobule continued to write and perform prolifically and to compose original music for television, including for the popular Nickelodeon series Unfabulous.
13.
Jill Sobule acted and performed her songs in writer-director Eric Schaeffer's 2004 film Mind the Gap, as a street musician in Astoria, Queens with a heart condition, who aspires to play in Manhattan.
14.
In exchange for their donations, Jill Sobule offered her patrons an assortment of rewards with values commensurate with the amount of the donation.
15.
On March 8,2008,53 days after the public launch of the site, Jill Sobule reached her target through donations from more than 500 people in 44 US states and the District of Columbia, and 11 foreign countries.
16.
In 2018, Jill Sobule again used crowdfunding to assist with the production of her next album, Nostalgia Kills.
17.
From 2020, Jill Sobule acted as musician-in-residence at the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, an LGBTQIA community center.
18.
From 1997 until 1998, Jill Sobule was a member of Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives.
19.
In 2005, Jill Sobule contributed music to Unfabulous, a popular Nickelodeon TV series about a 13-year-old aspiring songwriter, including a title song performed by Jill Sobule under the program's opening credits.
20.
Also in 2006, Jill Sobule created a theme song for blogger Arianna Huffington's self-help book On Becoming Fearless.
21.
In May 2008, Jill Sobule released a CD of music from Prozak and the Platypus, a multi-media collaboration of Jill Sobule, playwright Elise Thoron, and graphic artist KellyAnne Hanrahan.
22.
Jill Sobule died in a house fire in Woodbury, Minnesota, on the morning of May 1,2025, at the age of 66.