Jill Sobule

Jill Sobule and Lloyd Cole during a concert in Seattle

Jill Sobule (born January 16, 1961 in Denver, Colorado) is an American singer-songwriter best known for the controversial 1995 song "I Kissed a Girl", and for "Supermodel" from the soundtrack of the hit 1995 film Clueless. Her folk-inflected compositions alternate between ironic, story-driven character studies and sincere emotive ballads, a duality reminiscent of such 1970s American songwriters as Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman. But unlike those artists, Sobule's perspective is decidedly feminine. Autobiographical elements, including Sobule's adolescent battles with anorexia and depression, frequently occur in Sobule's writing. An appreciable percentage of her work is also dedicated to detailed accounts of both her own fictional female creations and such troubled but celebrated women as Joey Heatherton and Mary Kay Letourneau, whose stories are used to make ironic though compassionate comments about fame and celebrity.

History

Sobule's debut album Things Here Are Different was released in 1990. Though produced by pop legend Todd Rundgren, the album failed to sell, and it was five years before Sobule landed another recording contract. To date she has recorded five more records, three EPs and a greatest hits compilation as well as the Christmas novelty track "Merry Christmas From the Family" and a version of the late Warren Zevon's "Don't Let Us Get Sick" for a posthumous tribute album dedicated to songs by her close friend and one time labelmate. Though Sobule remains more of an underground artist, playing for fans across the United States in smaller, more personal settings, her albums are frequently critically acclaimed and her influential music industry fans include Rundgren, Tom Morello, Steve Earle and Eagles member Don Henley, who contributed a promotional quote to the ad campaign for Sobule's fourth album, Pink Pearl.

Sobule's 1995 album Jill Sobule established her as part of a short-lived but fruitful mid-90s movement of female singer-songwriters that included such artists as Lisa Loeb, Juliana Hatfield and Alanis Morrisette. The album contains Sobule's most well-known composition "I Kissed a Girl", a pithy story-song about a lesbian flirtation between two suburban girlfriends which became an unlikely radio success thanks in part to a comedic music video featuring beefcake male model Fabio as the heterosexual rival for Sobule's affections. The somewhat slyer "Supermodel" (sample lyric: "I didn't eat yesterday... and I'm not gonna eat today... and I'm not gonna eat tomorrow... 'Cause I'm gonna be a supermodel") managed to both send up and celebrate American teenage lifestyles, and became the standout track in the hit teen comedy film Clueless.

If Jill Sobule established Sobule as a commercial comer, her third album set what has so far been the pattern for the rest of her career. 1997's Happy Town contained Sobule's most elaborate pop productions to date and addressed topics including the negative impact of anti-depressant medication on the libido ("Happy Town"), reactionary Christianity ("Soldiers of Christ") and what is either the only track ever recorded that uses Anne Frank's Nazi-era hibernation as the metaphor for a love song or the only song about Anne Frank that couches her life and death in the terms of a tussle over loyalty between two lovers ("Attic"). Idiosyncratic and poetic, Happy Town was embraced by record reviewers but sold poorly, solidifying Sobule's critical reputation while stalling her commercial momentum.

Sobule's 2000 record Pink Pearl may be her most characteristic set. Anchored by the female character studies "Lucy at the Gym" (about an anorexic exercise addict), "Claire" (about an aging lesbian aviatrix succumbing to Alzheimer's disease) and "Mary Kay" (about Letourneau, the notorious real-life schoolteacher who became impregnated and imprisoned because of an affair with a 13-year-old male student), Pink Pearl also contains some of Sobule's most directly confessional songwriting, especially the athiest's prayer "Somewhere in New Mexico" and the insomniac's lullaby "Rock Me To Sleep."

Sobule's most recent full-length studio album is 2004's Underdog Victorious, a tuneful, coherent and entirely representative set that stands comfortably beside her previous two records, marking her as an essentially fully-formed creative voice. Here listeners will find comments on Sobule's own unconventional showbusiness career (the bittersweet "Freshman") as well as the tragicomic arc of go-go dancing 60s icon Joey Heatherton ("Joey") alongside whimsical autobiographical songs ("Cinnamon Park" and "Strawberry Gloss") and political tracks dealing with issues of homosexuality ("Underdog Victorious" and the hilarious "Under the Disco Ball") and even sexual slavery ("Tel Aviv," sung in character as a Jewish girl forced into prostitution after going overseas to get a waitressing job "in the Promised Land.") Sobule's unique niche as one of the more empathetic satirists working in popular song is encapsulated by her "tribute" to Heatherton, which gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the garish shallowness of Heatherton's story but with a chorus that finds Sobule singing "All she ever wanted was your love and affection/Isn't that the same thing that we all want?" before ending with the words "You can sleep at my house if you want to, Joey."

Miscellany

In 2000, Sobule joined Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives.

In late 2003, Sobule joined the "Tell Us the Truth" tour, an anti-war, anti-Bush administration collaboration with Billy Bragg, Tom Morello (as The Nightwatchman), Mike Mills, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Earle, and Boots Riley.

In 2004, she played one of the five leads in the film Mind The Gap.

In 2006, Sobule met Julia Sweeney, the actress, writer and commedienne, and started performing the "Jill and Julia Show", a compilation of songs and stories. They performed at the James Randi Educational Foundation meeting in Las Vegas on January 19, 2007.

In recent public appearances, Sobule has expressed interest in compiling a live album, in addition to releasing a new studio disc. On a blog from her myspace account, Sobule stated she is recording two new albums, one with underground string quartet Ethel.

Music

Sobule uses both satire and personal experience to sing about sexuality, depression, war, abandonment, and greed. Many of her songs incorporate humor into their narrative. She often creates detailed character sketches, especially of women. Generally, her songs are unconventionally folk-like, using lounge music percussion flourishes and retro horn charts not usually found in tracks recorded by mainstream artists. Occaisionally her arrangments intentionally mimic works by other performers, most noticeably on "Rainy Day Parade" from 2000's Pink Pearl which quotes TV's The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme to lend ironic triumphalism to a song about a woman going back on her anti-depressant medication, and "Cinnamon Park" from the 2004 album Underdog Victorious, which paraphrases portions of the 1972 single "Saturday in the Park" by the band Chicago. Her rythmic sensibility at times recalls cocktail music deity Esquivel, and her harmony parts can resemble the Beatles on some of her more elaborate album tracks -- possibly a legacy of her early recording efforts with Nazz founder and avowed Beatlemaniac Todd Rundgren.

Discography

Studio albums

• Things Here Are Different (1990)
• Jill Sobule (1995)
• Happy Town (1997)
• Pink Pearl (2000)
• The Folk Years 2003-2003 (2004) (Independent Release)
• Underdog Victorious (2004)
• untitled studio album (2007)

Compilations

• I Never Learned To Swim: Jill Sobule 1990-2000 (2001) (Best of Compilation)

EPs

• It's the Thought That Counts [EP] (2000) (Independent Release)
• Be Mine... Please [EP] (2001) (Independent Release)
• It's the Thought That Counts (Re-issue) [EP] (2005) (Independent Release)

Singles

• 1990: "Too Cool to Fall in Love"
• 1990: "Living Color"
• 1995: "I Kissed a Girl"
• 1996: "Good Person Inside" (Radio Version)
• 1996: "Supermodel" (Radio Remix)
• 1997: "Bitter" (PG-13 Edit)
• 1997: "When My Ship Comes In" (Edit)
• 2000: "One of These Days" (Radio Version)
• 2000: "Rainy Day Parade"
• 2001: "Stoned Soul Picnic"
• 2004: "Cinnamon Park" (PG Edit)

Soundtrack appearances

• 1995: "Supermodel" from Clueless
• 1996: "Where Do I Begin" from The Truth About Cats & Dogs
• 1996: "Truth Is You Lied" from Grace of My Heart
• 1996: "The Secretive Life" from Harriet the Spy
• 1999: "Rainy Day Parade" from Mystery Men
• 2003: "Tel Aviv", "Nothing Natural", "Bitter", "Somewhere in New Mexico", "Freshmen", and "Vrbana Bridge" from Mind the Gap
• 2005: "Love Is Never Equal" from Jenny McCarthy's Dirty Love

Various artist compilations

• 1992: "Too Cool to Fall in Love" from An Elpee's Worth of Productions
• 1995: "The Jig Is Up" from Grooves: Volume 8
• 1995: "Good Person Inside" and "The Man in the Boat" from Spew
• 1995: "Merry Christmas from the Family" from You Sleigh Me
• 1997: "Stoned Soul Picnic" from Time and Love: The Music of Laura Nyro
• 1997: "I Will Survive" from In Their Own Words and from Hard Rock Live
• 1998: "Saddest Day of the Year" from A Christmas to Remember
• 1999: "Just a Little Lovin'" from Forever Dusty
• 1999: "Sunrise, Sunset" from Knitting on the Roof
• 2000: "Rainy Day Parade" from New Talent Spotlight Volume 2
• 2000: "I Kissed a Girl" from K-TEL Pop Alternative
• 2004: "Don't Let Us Get Sick" from Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon

B-sides

• 1995: Queen of Spades (from the Supermodel single)
• 1997: Loveless Motel (from the Bitter single, later included on album Pink Pearl)
• 2000: Lucy at the Gym (from the When My Ship Comes In single, later included on album Pink Pearl)
• 2004: Almost Fell (Bonus track on the Borders edition of Underdog Victorious)

Unreleased

• 2000: "Youthful Indiscretions"
• 2003: "Nothing I Can Do" (from the off-Broadway production Prozac and the Platypus)
• 2004: "Perry St." (from the Underdog Victorious recording sessions)
• 2004: "Let's Get Back Together" (from the Underdog Victorious recording sessions)
• 2004: "Mickey and Me" (from the Underdog Victorious recording sessions)
• 2004: "Western Skies"
• 2004: "Blue America"
• 2006: "Bobbie Gentry"
• 2006: "Manhattan in January"
• 2006: "The End of Love"
• 2006: "San Francisco"
• ????: "While You Were Sleeping"
• ????: "Billy's Thing"
• ????: "Small Things"
• ????: "Mom"
• ????: "My Life Uncovered"
• ????: "Ready for the Rapture"
• ????: "Red Purse"
• ????: "Texas"
• ????: "Money Shot"
• ????: "Everybody's Queer" with Richard Barone
• ????: "Bloody Valentine"
• ????: "Don't Fuck With Me"
• ????: "The Most Miserable Girl in the World"
• ????: "Ritalin Kid"

Other

• Clouds Over Eden (1994) -- Richard Barone
• The Negatives (2000) - Lloyd Cole and The Negatives
• Unfabulous -- TV show soundtrack
• So Jill -- Tribute song written & performed by Jane Wiedlin, Lloyd Cole & Charlotte Caffey

External links

• Official Site
• Jill Sobule's Blog on The Huffington Post
• FanSite
• Podcast Interview on TheFlux.tv