(JEWISH GROUP) Jill Sobule was as much a Jewish icon as a queer one
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule died in a house fire at age 66 at her home in Woodbury, Minnesota, on May 1. A self-described “two-hit wonder,” Sobule is best known for her songs “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel.”
At the time of her death, Sobule was booked on a cross-country tour of the U.S., including gigs at such venerable venues as Club Passim in Cambridge, Mass., and Joe’s Pub in New York City.
While most obituaries and appreciations have noted that Sobule’s song topics were often autobiographical, including depression, eating disorders and queerness – not the typical fare of pop songs, especially when Sobule was starting out in the early-to-mid 1990s – Sobule also often wrote about her Jewish background and concerns. In this manner, she was a serious Jewish artist as much as she was a queer icon who described herself as bisexual.
Sobule’s 1997 song, “Attic,” asked the essential question: “Would you have hidden me in your attic … or packed me on that awful train?” The song appeared at number 11 on the Forward’s 2022 list of the Top 150 Jewish Pop Songs. In her 2000 song “Heroes,” about celebrities and historic figures with stains in their private lives, Sobule noted that “T.S. Eliot hated Jews, FDR didn’t save the Jews…. All the French joined the resistance after the war.”
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