Denver Legend Jill Sobule Talks Nuggets Fandom and JD Vance Before Homecoming Show

Jill Sobule passed away on May 1; the concert at Swallow Hill Music will now be an informal gathering to celebrate her life.

Jill Sobule is locked in for the current Denver Nuggets playoff run.

The self-proclaimed “fanatic” makes it a point to stay up to date with the team she grew up cheering for, no matter where she is. And as a busy touring musician, that includes getting updates while on stage, if necessary.

“I was playing a show somewhere in New York during the championship run two years ago, and there was a game, so I said to the audience, ‘I don’t like people on their phones, but after my song, would you guys tell me the score?’” she recalls. “So instead of people clapping for my songs, they’d cheer or jeer, depending on the score.

“I have priorities,” Sobule quips.

The witty singer-songwriter grew up in Denver before heading to NYC to pursue a music career. She jokes about the peak of her Nuggets fandom, back in the mid-1970s when the team was still known as the Rockets and transitioned from playing the folding American Basketball Association to the NBA with a new moniker.

“I’m going to brag. The only thing I’ve ever won in my life is that I was eight years old, and I won the Denver Nuggets poster contest,” she shares. “I got to meet all the players and an AM-FM clock radio, which blew up.”

Subole also ended up blowing up, after her 1995 self-titled sophomore album charted behind the success of hit singles “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel,” which landed on the soundtrack of the successful teen-comedy Clueless the same year. The music video for “I Kissed a Girl,” an offbeat story about a budding lesbian flirtation, featured ’90s mega hunk and romance novel cover model Fabio Lanzoni, further pushing its popularity. (I know what you’re thinking: No, Katy Perry did not cover Sobule’s song, but used the same title for her own 2008 breakthrough tune.)
So Sobule considers herself a “two-hit wonder,” but she suddenly found herself among a burgeoning wave of guitar-wielding women singer-songwriters like Lisa Loeb and Alanis Morissette. Given her clever sense of humor, Sobule’s ability to write catchy, sardonic takes on social issues and taboo topics, often interspersed with personal anecdotes, continues to be her trademark. In 2023, the Hill Jr. High alum wrote and produced an off-Broadway play, Fuck 7th Grade, inspired by her awkward adolescence and experience coming out as queer.

More recently, she debuted a little ditty about vice president JD Vance off the cuff while opening for British new-wavers the Fixx in March. She elegantly calls it “JD Vance is a Cunt.”

“It’s not a big hit, it’s just a really dumb little thing with a lot of words that rhyme with ‘cunt,’” she says. “It’s not radio-friendly. It’s not my best song, but it does get to the point. ”

After realizing not everyone appreciates the sentiment, she’s since taken to performing it at her merch booth post-show. But it’s already becoming somewhat of a cult classic online. If you want to sing along, check out her upcoming Denver show on Friday, May 2, at Swallow Hill Music’s Tuft Theatre.

After growing up in the Hilltop neighborhood, Sobule hasn’t lived in Denver for over thirty years now, but every time she’s back the city still feels like home. “Going back at first, you’d kind of feel weird. You’d have weird memories,” she explains. “Then the last couple years, when I come back to Denver, I’m like, ‘I want to move back. This is the best place on Earth.’”

She even performed an acoustic rendition of Fuck 7^th Grade in her childhood home during a recent visit.

“All these people I haven’t seen since junior high came to the show, and some of the people I was ripping to shreds,” Sobule adds. “But it was so great. We’re all friends now. It made me realize that everybody was just as miserable as I was.”

This time around, she doesn’t have anything too special planned, unless the ongoing Nuggets-Clippers series ends up going to a decisive Game 7 on Saturday, May 3, at Ball Arena.

“Usually when I’m there, I just see a couple friends and sometimes I walk to my old neighborhood,” Sobule says. “But if I can catch a game, I’ll stay after.”

Jill Sobule, 8 p.m. Friday, May 2, Tuft Theatre, 71 East Yale Ave. Tickets are $30.