Jill Sobule is not easy to categorize as a singer-songwriter. Her work isn’t exactly Rock, nor is Folk, per se. She’s the owner of a scathing, yet endearing sense of humor, with which she imbues a fair share of her songs. A major part of her appeal and her pervasive talent is her ability to mix and match seemingly contradictory approaches and themes within her oeuvre, within individual albums, and even within one song. Her most famous ditty, the so-called novelty hit "I Kissed A Girl" is at once winking and silly, with little flecks of beauty and pensive sobriety that balance it into something more than a cute little bisexual romance song.


Much the same can be said for Jill’s work as a whole; she takes on the issues of our times with wit and aplomb, keeping her listeners laughing, whilst saying more than any novelty act could really hope to. Take for example her recent admonishments of George Bush, Jr. in Put Him in the Hall of Fame, in which she suggests that George could have been a hero, had he followed his dreams, rather than going for a job he didn't really understand. She then makes one of the few eloquent comparisons of Bush to Hitler in existence, by asserting, "If Hitler had been a great painter, hung out with Pablo in France, there’d be no History Channel and I’d have a lot more great aunts."

Sobule is also known for her curious and sweet valentines to maligned people in the public eye. Not many performers would have the sheer gall to write a song of encouragement to Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher charged with porking her 12-year-old student. But Sobule does it, and makes it adorable with lines like, "under the bleachers, deeper and deeper; oh teacher!" The funny thing about Jill's humorous songs is that they're generally not so much funny as they are honest, and unaccustomed to hearing such honesty in song, we respond with giggles. One never gets the impression that she's set out to make us laugh, so much as she's letting life bleed into the music and the humor is part of life's scope.

This is all balanced by the way in which Sobule tackles more somber or serious subject matter. Songs like The Last Line, about a pair of drug addicts at the end of their wicks, include very sobering sentiments, such as, "Searching for a speck of dust, just enough for both of us, I knew our love was over: You couldn’t share; it was the last line." Likewise, she’s the author of the first positive break-up song that this blogger ever heard, Now That I Don’t Have You, in which we get a sense that the end of this relationship is a boon to our heroine, rather than a bust; "I have dreams, now that you’re not lying next to me, I can sleep, I can rest in peace, I’m not tossing and turning on your bed of nails."




Those of us who have followed Jill's career for well over a decade have often been baffled by the lack of response to her work, by the fact that she’s found a niche, but not a grand living doing what she does so well. Part of this is no doubt due to the way in which audiences like to pigeon-hole their performers, and it’s difficult to do that with Sobule's vast and varied work, with its emotional highs and lows, its clever blend of hilarity and quiet sobriety, and its attention to life's inexplicable quirks. But moreover, I suspect Jill has been somewhat maligned due to her insistence on calling the powers that be out on their bullshit in ways that are less confrontational than they are sincere and mirthful.

She’s been a strong advocate for queer issues and queer individuals, as well as harshly critical of conservatism and bigotry. She often writes songs from the viewpoint of the bigots in question, like Under the Disco Ball, in which she mockingly asserts that the Gay Agenda is out to get you: "They have a scheme, they have a plan, to take the children of our land and turn them into stylists and women who play golf," or the fundamentalist torch song to the good ol' days, Soldiers of Christ, which reminds us that "In the days of Cain and Abel, in the days of the Crusades, in the days of Inquisition; we made the damned behave. Before emancipation, before Roe and Wade, before they taught the little children that they evolved from apes: The way it used to be, the way it oughtta be, the way it’s gonna be again!"



To add to her already extensive list of Total Cool, Sobule offers regularly rotating free MP3s on her website. She’s also a contributor to NPR, The Huffington Post, and maintains a music and politics blog. She’s a pioneer of the true Indie mentality and has bucked the tired old label system to self produce, with the help of her fans, a tactic that is proving beneficial to those who make music and those who listen to it alike. I’ll damn sure be giving her all that I can afford to pay for this new release. You should definitely order some (or all!) of her previous albums, but I especially encourage you to chip in on the new one, as I’m eager to get a new opus from one of America’s most prolific, original and formidable musical talents. Go give her a listen!