Bisexual musician Jill Sobule, the singer-songwriter behind the 1995 sapphic anthem “I Kissed a Girl,” died Thursday in a house fire at age 66.

Firefighters were called about 5:30 a.m. to a home in Woodbury, Minnesota, a suburb of the Twin Cities, The New York Times reports. They found Sobule dead inside the house.

She was staying with friends while rehearsing for a performance of songs from her autobiographical one-woman show, Fuck 7^th Grade, which was to take place Friday at the Swallow Hill Music Festival in Denver, Sobule’s hometown, her publicist said.

Sobule’s “I Kissed a Girl” came out 13 years before Katy Perry’s different song of the same name. Sobule’s tune, off a self-titled album, was “the first song with blatantly queer themes to break the Billboard Top 20,” GLAAD notes. A video of the song was popular on MTV.

Sobule’s sexuality became the subject of speculation after the song’s release, and her record label initially told The Advocate she was straight. However, she then contacted the magazine to talk about her identity.

“I guess if I had to pinpoint my sexual orientation — which I hate to do — then bisexuality would come the closest,” she said in an interview published in the January 23, 1996, issue of The Advocate. She found bisexuals stigmatized by both gay and straight people, and she said she had to get over some assumptions herself. “I used to think that when people said they were bisexual, they were just copping out because they didn’t want to admit they were full-fledged queers,” she told the magazine. “Now I think that’s so closed-minded. I believe there’s a whole spectrum of sexuality.”

She said she wanted to be a positive role model, and she went on the be outspoken about LGBTQ+ issues, the death penalty, reproductive rights, eating disorders, the MAGA movement, and more. She addressed many of these topics in her songs as well.

“Jill Sobule wasn’t just a trailblazer in music — she was a beacon for queer artists, and I was incredibly lucky to call her a dear friend,” said a statement from GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “Long before it was safe or common, Jill was writing and singing about sexuality and identity with raw honesty and wit. At a time when doing so could have cost her everything, she chose truth. That courage helped pave the way for today’s artists like Brandi Carlile, Tegan and Sara, Lil Nas X, Sam Smith, Adam Lambert, and so many others who now stand proud and open in their music.”

Sobule released 12 albums, most of them “genreless and creative,” the Timesnotes, and was a pioneer in using crowdfunding to produce them. She had another hit with “Supermodel” from the 1995 film Clueless. She also wrote the theme song for the Nickelodeon series Unfabulous, which starred Emma Roberts and ran from 2004 to 2007. Her one-woman show became an off-Broadway hit in 2022 and had three more productions after its original staging. It was a New York Times critics’ pick and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. An original cast recording of the show will come out June 6, plus a reissue of her self-titled album, which includes “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel.”

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Seventh grade was her worst year in school, she recalled to Playbill in 2023. “All of a sudden, peers become more important than your parents,” she said. “In 6th grade, I was this tomboy, I was a badass, I was the electric guitar player. Suddenly, 7th grade happened, and my friends started wearing makeup and I didn’t feel like I fit in. I knew early on that there was something different about me; that I had crushes on my friends, and that wasn’t the ‘right thing.’ 7th grade is when it all fell apart.”

In Fuck 7^th Grade, “she described being called a homophobic slur, feeling out of place among the other girls and having an unrequited crush on a girl,” the Timesreports. She once “joked that growing up, her only queer role models had been Miss Jane Hathaway from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and her gym teacher, ‘who looked like Pete Rose,’” the famous baseball player, according to the paper.

In 2009, she told The Advocate she had “no bad feelings” about Perry’s song. “I still think it’s great to have a song, if I was a little girl, and I heard Katy Perry’s ‘Kissed a Girl’ and I had those kind of feelings, which I did, I would still feel like, that’s great, that’s wonderful,” she said. “But I will say that maybe mine was a little more, just a touch more queer than Girls Gone Wild. Maybe.”

In addition to Ellis, others who recalled Sobule fondly included her manager, John Porter, who released this statement to the media: “Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture. I was having so much fun working with her. I lost a client and a friend today. I hope her music, memory, & legacy continue to live on and inspire others.” 

Her lawyer, Ken Hertz, added, “Jill wasn’t just a client. She was family to us. She showed up for every birth, every birthday, and every holiday. She performed at our daughter’s wedding, and I was her ‘tech’ when she performed by Zoom from our living room (while living with us) during the pandemic.” 

The Swallow Hill Music Festival will host a free gathering in Sobule’s honor from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Friday. It’s open to all. A more formal memorial event will be held this summer.

Survivors include her brother and sister-in-law, James and Mary Ellen Sobule; her nephews, Ian Matthew and Robert; and Robert’s wife, Irina.