The world lost one of its better inhabitants this week. On May 1, 2025, Jill Sobule was killed in a tragic house fire. Words can't express our loss. Jill was truly a remarkable human being. I'm heartened by the continuing show of love and support I'm seeing all over social media for the last few days from her friends and fans alike...
I was lucky enough to be working at a radio station who played Jill's first hit single, "I Kissed a Girl," when it was released on her debut self-titled album in 1995. Over the next few years, she visited radio stations I worked at to perform live and sit for interviews, and she attended a number of industry conferences where we got to hang out and become friends.
Jill's many interests included news and politics. After I segued from my career in music radio to progressive talk, Jill remained a fairly frequent guest. She was always informed about what was going on. Jill was an outspoken activist in both her actions and songs. In 2011, she appeared at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis to perform an original song she wrote for the occasion honoring immigrants and groups who help them, "America Back." (You can find the recording of that song from that event here on YouTube.)
I was going to put together a show to honor Jill with clips of her various appearances on my show over the years. While searching through my archives, I found this recording from September 1, 2009. At the time, I was hosting a show weeknights on Air America Radio, usually from my home studio in South Florida. That week, I was visiting Los Angeles, broadcasting live from studios there.
Jill Sobule had just released her first crowd-funded album on her own new label, Pinko Records. It was produced by Don Was and titled "California Years." Jill and Don joined me in the studio one evening. With the commercials, news and other non-related content edited out it runs just over an hour. Sadly the recording stopped while we were wrapping up, with Jill in mid-sentence singing a "happy song" about a dream in which she was fighting Nazis.
I hadn't realized I had that recording until I came across it this weekend. After listening to it I realized that I should just share this entire broadcast. We spent the time talking about so many different things, and she and Don performed a few songs. In that setting, you get to hear Jill just being Jill. Sweet, funny, immensely talented and quite humble.
I'll soon put together a post with a bunch of the interviews we'd done together over the years. But for today, we'll hang with Jill Sobule for a while and remember how lucky we were to have her while we did. She did, indeed, live a good life.
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