Jill Sobule, a fourth-generation Denver indie rocker who rocketed to fame with the 1995 radio hit “I Kissed a Girl,” died in an early morning house fire on Thursday (May 1) in Woodbury, Minn., her family announced. She was 66.

The nightmare ending came at a time when the celebrated activist and icon was enjoying both a career resurgence and reinvention.

Sobule was scheduled to perform her big-buzz new stage biomusical, titled “F*ck 7th Grade,” tonight (Friday) at the Swallow Hill Music Hall in Denver, on Saturday night at the Basalt Performing Arts Center, and on Sunday at the Fort Collins Armory.

Instead, friends and fans will come together tonight at Swallow Hill (71 E. Yale Ave.) beginning at around 7 p.m. for an informal gathering hosted by Ron Bostwick of 105.5 The Colorado Sound.

“The first time Jill came through Swallow Hill was in 1982, and she performed here numerous times over the years — so she is part of what we do,” said spokesman Barry Osborne. “We hope we can give her the tribute tonight that she deserves.”

Griffin House, who will be playing in Swallow Hill’s largest auditorium tonight, has dedicated his performance to Sobule, saying: “I was blown away by her creativity and spirit. She was such an incredible writer, so clever and so punk rock. I’m so thankful I got to meet her and share some music with her.”

Sobule was a contemporary of celebrated mid-’90s singer-songwriters Lisa Loeb, Juliana Hatfield and Alanis Morrisette.

“Who didn’t know of Jill Sobule in the mid-’90s — especially here in her home state?” Bostwick said. “MTV loved playing the ‘I Kissed A Girl’ video, and Coloradans loved the attention to one of our own.”

Sobule’s alt-rock anthem “Supermodel” was featured in the film “Clueless.” But she will be forever linked to “I Kissed a Girl,” a song about two women who discover an attraction for one another while commiserating about boyfriends. It was the first openly gay-themed song ever to crack the Billboard Top 20, and it was said to have inspired the film “Kissing Jessica Stein.”

The Colorado Music Experience ranked the song among the 50 greatest tunes with a Colorado connection. And did it ever cause an uproar. One radio station in Nashville broadcast parental advisories before playing the song.

Sobule told journalist G. Brown she never did understand the big deal.

“It’s a pretty innocent comedy song,” Sobule said. “I mean, it reminds me of a bad ’90s version of ‘Love, American Style.’ It certainly isn’t a Melissa Etheridge ‘Yes I Am’ thing, you know?”

Sobule has been developing “F7G,” which recounts in stories and songs her outsider adolescent angst in Denver, since 2019 at City Theatre of Pittsburgh under Marc Masterson. It was then selected for further development at the 2019 Colorado New Play Festival in Steamboat Springs.

Sobule starred in a completely sold-out off-Broadway run of the show in late 2023. She even wore a Denver Broncos Orange Crush T-Shirt in the show, which was nominated as best musical by the Drama Desk Awards. That’s in some ways even more significant than a Tony Award nomination because the Drama Desk considers the best of both Broadway and Off-Broadway combined.

In the musical, Sobule talked about surviving the casual cruelties of middle school in the early ’70s as a tomboy and a nerd; tiptoeing her way out of the closet; and her journey from MTV sensation to getting dropped by the record label that had insisted on sanitizing “I Kissed a Girl” of any lesbian implications. Nearly 50 years later, she appeared as herself on “The Simpsons” as a hero to Lisa Simpson.

Take that, bullies.

At the time, Sobule told The Denver Gazette her goal was for the show to have a future life, especially in Denver. That life was set to begin this weekend.

“F7G” was widely praised as “delightful, poignant and utterly charming” by This Week In New York and as “unsentimental, humorous and gently weird” by TimeOut. The New York Times made it a critics’ pick, calling it “a show for the many nerds who grew up to be the cool people.”

A blogger named Sari Botton who saw the 90-minute musical called it “a tortured balm for my awkward, tortured inner 13-year-old.”

Sobule attended Hill Middle School and, despite her Jewish upbringing, St. Mary’s Academy for high school. (Why Catholic high school? For the strict discipline, she told Brown.)

Her musical path began when she picked up her first guitar in sixth grade, which she then played as part of her junior high school stage band. She wrote her first song during that fateful seventh-grade school year that inspired her new musical, which essentially asserts that we never really get out of middle school.

She did not work up the nerve to play her songs in front of people until coming home after spending a year abroad in Spain.

“What was great about Denver was the venues,” she told Brown. “I had the chance to grow, because I don’t think I was very good at first. I went through so many different kinds of bands and sounds, but you could get paid to play original music, and I actually made a meager living. I would never have been able to do that in New York. The only reason people pick up a guitar there is to get a record deal. That takes a lot away from the creative process. Playing in Denver, I did what I wanted to do.”

Most recently, Sobule was developing a new rock adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” with Krista Knight. “Crimson Lit” is an irreverent and contemporary exhumation of one of America’s oldest gender scandals. It was a wild ride, her director said.

“I grew up listening to Jill’s music, so when the opportunity arose to workshop her new musical, I jumped at the opportunity,” Wendy C. Goldberg, also a frequent contributor to the Denver Center Theatre Company, told The Denver Gazette. “What happened next was some of the most inspiring, collaborative and light-filled theater-making experiences I have had in a long time.

“We are all devastated and shocked by this loss of one of the most unique contemporary songwriters I have ever had the privilege to know.”

Sobule’s family is remembering her as a fierce human rights activist who was known and loved by cultural and political icons including Bernie Sanders.

“Jill’s work was at once deeply personal and socially conscious, seriously funny and derisively tragic,” her family said in a statement.

The original cast recording of “F*ck 7th Grade” will be released June 6, alongside a special 30th anniversary red vinyl reissue of her landmark self-titled second album. (Her first was produced by Todd Rundgren.)

“In a dozen albums spanning three decades, Sobule tackled such topics as the death penalty, anorexia nervosa, shoplifting, reproduction, the French Resistance, adolescent malaise, intolerance, and the MAGA movement with her signature wit and soul-bearing authenticity,” the family statement said.

“Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human-rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture,” said her manager, John Porter. “I hope her music, memory and legacy continue to live on and inspire others.”

Beth Malone, a Tony Award-nominated actor who lives near Basalt, where Sobule was scheduled to perform on Saturday, saw “F7G” twice in New York. She was introduced to Sobule by Julie Wolf and Nini Camps (from the rock band Antigone Rising), who assisted Sobule with the music direction for her show.

“She was warm and self-effacing and sharp as a tack,” said Malone, who had arranged for Sobule to see a chiropractor in Basalt this weekend because of an ongoing sciatica issue.

“It’s just a terrible, terrible tragedy,” she said.

Sobule was also considered a pioneer in crowdfunding, constantly exploring new models to empower artists in the ever-changing music industry. She was a favorite of the “digerati” — having performed at the annual TED conference more than any other artist.

Sobule’s last concert in Denver was an intimate set this past December at the Savoy Denver, during which she called the iconic Lannie Garrett onto the stage for an unplanned duet of a Warren Zevon song. Garrett had frequently booked Sobule when she ran her eponymous Clocktower Cabaret — once with Julia Sweeney of “Saturday Night Live” fame. They called it “The Jill and Julia Show.”

“I’ve known Jill since we both started out singing in this town decades ago,” Garrett wrote on Facebook. “She was a mere 19 years old when I first saw her perform at a gay bar called The Orr House. Her shows were always different — and always, hilarious, clever and poignant.”

Denver actor Mark Collins attended that Savoy concert, drawn by the intimate setting and his own musical nostalgia.

“It felt like a homecoming for Jill because she knew so many people in the audience,” Collins said. “She was just a great storyteller, both in her songs and in her banter around the songs. She could go from angry to funny to sentimental to heartfelt just like that.”

Friends told the New York Times that Sobule, who lived in New York, was staying with friends in Minnesota while she rehearsed for her scheduled weekend performances in Colorado.

The Public Safety Department in Woodbury, a suburb of St. Paul, said in a statement that firefighters had responded at 5:30 a.m. CDT to a report that a house was engulfed in flames.

“The homeowners said one person was possibly still inside,” according to a statement. “The department said firefighters found the body of a woman in her 60s inside the house.”

The Woodbury Police Department confirmed that the victim was Sobule. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Sobule is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, James and Mary Ellen Sobule, as well as numerous nephews, cousins and friends.

There will be a formal memorial celebrating her life and legacy later this summer, the family said.