In mid-March, Jill Sobule arrived at her friend Michelle Lewis’ home in L.A. to write songs with Lewis and her co-writing partner, former Letters to Cleo frontperson Kay Hanley. Calling themselves Sugar Tits, the three had collaborated periodically over the years. As Lewis and Hanley learned right away, Sobule had one tune already in hand: a sly ditty filled with words that rhymed with “unt” (“runt,” “blunt,” “grunt,” “Emily Blunt,” and so on). One chorus ended, teasingly, with “J.D. Vance is a …” Only in the last chorus did Sobule actually sing the full line: “J.D. Vance is a cunt.”
“She played it for us, and we were like, ‘Oh, my God,’” Hanley tells Rolling Stone. “Michelle and I came up with background parts and we filmed it and I started a TikTok account for Sugar Tits and just threw it up.”
A month and a half later, Sobule, most widely known for the ground-breaking bisexual anthem “I Kissed a Girl,” died tragically in a house fire in Woodbury, Minnesota, where she was staying with friends. Sobule was in town to help prep a performance of her one-woman-with-band autobiographical musical, F*ck 7th Grade. The cause of the fire is not yet known (the case is still “under active investigation,” Woodbury police tell Rolling Stone), and a toxicology report on the cause of death will likely take weeks. As to why Sobule didn’t make it out the burning house in time, her manager, John Porter, wonders if one of her medical issues played a role. “She was in so much back pain that she was taking muscle relaxants or sedatives to sleep, and that might have made it harder for her to get out,” he says. “But I don’t know for sure.”
As far as “J.D. Vance Is a C___,” Sobule told Westword, a few days before her death, that it was a “really dumb little thing with a lot of words that rhyme with ‘cunt.’ It’s not radio-friendly. It’s not my best song, but it does get to the point.” In a bittersweet irony, the song — possibly the last one she wrote — was becoming a viral hit when she died. The two-minute video of Sugar Tits singing “J.D. Vance Is a C___” was approaching one million views on Facebook, giving Sobule more public exposure than she’d had in years and thrusting her back into the national conversation in ways she didn’t expect.
Although the general public was largely unaware of Sobule’s work after “I Kissed a Girl” and the 1995 Clueless anthem “Supermodel,” she’d remained active all along. An original cast recording of F*ck 7th Grade was scheduled for release next month, and she was planning to start cutting a new album this summer. Sobule was also working on a memoir and was prepping to write new material with Sugar Tits (named after something Mel Gibson supposedly said to a female cop when he was pulled over for drunk driving in 2006, although Gibson has denied that).
For another project, Sobule had reached out in February to frequent collaborator, journalist, cartoonist, and musician Bill DeMain. She told him she was working on a group of songs “playfully criticizing people in the new administration,” DeMain recalls. Topical songs weren’t new to Sobule; her earlier “Soldiers of Christ” and “America Back” took aim at Christian conservatism and MAGA, respectively. In this case, Sobule had written one verse for “J.D. Vance Is a C___” but needed a melody, so DeMain devised what he calls a “Harry Nilsson-type tune” that would offset the bluntness of the lyric. “She said, ‘That’s great,’ because it lightens it but also makes it more, in her word, ‘insidious,’” says DeMain, who also contributed a verse.
As it turns out, “J.D. Vance Is a C___” was tailor-made for Sugar Tits. “The plan was to make social media videos, because the topics of Sugar Tits songs are what’s in the news now,” says Hanley. “It’s not really stuff you’re meant to dwell on. ‘J.D. Vance Is a Cunt’ is great video to look at, take in, laugh at it, and then for it to leave your consciousness.”
After the video of the song (filmed in Lewis’ living room) went viral, Sobule wasn’t content to have the song exist only in that space. Before she went on the road opening for the Fixx in early April, she debuted it at a few solo shows. Talking about the difference between headlining her own gigs and opening for other acts, she told one crowd, “I can do whatever,” and played “J.D. Vance Is a C___.”
At those shows at least, her fans responded enthusiastically. “It’s not easy to write political songs without sounding like an asshole or preachy or, holier than thou, and it’s really difficult to do that especially for women,” says Hanley. “But she was so funny, sweet and smart that you just couldn’t be pissed at her. When claws came out for other sorts of liberal activists, Jill seemed to avoid some of that because of the way she was. She was like pixie dust.”
When she started opening for the Fixx, though, the reaction wasn’t always so positive. At a show at the Palladium in New York, Sobule was shoved by one woman (possibly two) as she made her way to her merch table after her set. “They told her, ‘Keep your politics to yourself,’ or something like that,” says Porter. During a text exchange afterwards, Hanley asked Sobule if the New York experience was shocking. “It was, but I’m over it now,” Sobule texted back. “Back in the saddle.”
The following night, Sobule told that story to a Fixx crowd in Pennsylvania — and then sang the song anyway. At another Fixx show, someone in the crowd yelled at her after she sang it. For the next few shows, Porter let security at those venues know there could be an issue, although nothing dramatic or dangerous happened. “It’s not an artist manager’s job to get in the way of a creative and activist soul like Jill,” says Porter. “In the case of the ‘J.D.’ song, artists need to stand up to authoritarian bullies. Jill was already at risk by this administration being who and what she was — a strong, politically active woman. Encouraging her to be her and set an example for others, easier for me. I am behind the scenes. But Jill was brave and willing to be an instigator.”
Sobule did, however, decide not to perform “J.D. Vance Is a C___” at shows in Franklin, Tennessee, and Richmond, Virginia. Both shows taking place in the South was one reason, as was the fact that Sobule’s regular tour manager wasn’t working those days. “She was more alone [at those shows],” Porter says. “These MAGA bears need to be poked, but her safety and health came first.” (After her sets, Sobule did opt to sing the song for fans at her merch table.)
“The fact that the song has struck a chord is maybe because we’re not hearing a lot of songwriters who are brave enough to criticize [the Trump team],” says DeMain. “And humor is one of the things that really bothers Trump. It’s why he gets so mad at Jimmy Kimmel or Saturday Night Live, because he doesn’t know how to laugh, so he’s furious. She acknowledged it was just kind of a silly little throwaway thing, but it’s something people will be talking about.”
At the moment, the future of “J.D. Vance Is a C___” is unclear. In 2017, Sobule compiled an album of modern protest songs, Monster Protest Jamz (Volume 1), with contributions from her, Jackson Browne, Tom Morello, Graham Nash, and others. Porter feels that the song (assuming there is a workable recorded version of it) could fit on a second possible volume. “She kept adding verses to it,” he says. “It turns out that lots of things rhyme that were apropos.”
In the meantime, her friends, including her occasional bandmates, are wrapping their heads around Sobule’s shocking death. Sobule had planned on returning to Los Angeles to resume writing songs for Sugar Tits posts. “She was going be staying with Michelle and that was what we had planned for this week,” says Hanley. “Instead, we’re planning a Shiva.”
