Jill Sobule, the singer and songwriter whose gay anthem “I Kissed a Girl” and hit “Supermodel,” heard in the movie “Clueless,” were followed by three decades of touring, advocacy and a one-woman musical, died on Thursday morning in a house fire in Woodbury, Minn. She was 66.
Her death was announced by her publicist, David Elkin.
The Public Safety Department in Woodbury, a suburb of St. Paul, said that firefighters had responded at 5:30 a.m. to a report that a house was engulfed in flames. The homeowners said one person was possibly still inside. The department said that firefighters found the body of a woman in her 60s inside the house. The Woodbury Police Department confirmed that the victim was Ms. Sobule.
The cause of the fire is still under active investigation.
Ms. Sobule was scheduled to perform songs from her autobiographical one-woman musical, “F*ck7thGrade,” on Friday at Swallow Hill Music, a venue in her hometown, Denver, said Mr. Elkin said, who added that she was staying with friends in Minnesota while she rehearsed for the musical.
Ms. Sobule’s 1995 album, which contained the songs “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel,” was her commercial breakthrough.
A free informal gathering will be held in Ms. Sobule’s honor instead.
On her second album, released in 1995 called simply “Jill Sobule,” Ms. Sobule, who was bisexual, featured “I Kissed a Girl,” which tells the story of a woman who kisses a female friend:
I kissed a girl
Her lips were sweet.
She was just like kissing me.
Kissed a girl, won’t change the world
But I’m so glad
I kissed a girl!
The song came out when it was “dicey” to be a queer musician, Ms. Sobule once recalled. But it broke into the mainstream, making its way onto the Billboard charts. It reached the Top 20 of the magazine’s Modern Rock Tracks chart, then known as the Alternative Airplay chart, and was the first song with an openly gay theme to reach Top 20 of any Billboard chart. (It also reached No. 67 on the Hot 100 singles chart.)
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