How Jill Sobule Shaped Kickstarter’s Beginnings — and Left Us One Final Project to Support

In September 2018, musician Jill Sobule sat down with our sister site, The Creative Independent. The interview coincided with her first official Kickstarter campaign, but Sobule’s connection to this community started long before she ever launched a project here.

Years earlier, Sobule had pioneered her own version of fan-powered funding. For an album release, she invited supporters to directly fund the recording, building a DIY system that looked similar to what Kickstarter was envisioning. When Kickstarter was still just Kickstartr (no “e”), founder Perry Chen and co-founder Yancey Strickler were following her work.

“We were inspired to see Jill’s campaign and its success,” Chen recalls. “It lined up so closely with the vision we already had for Kickstarter. It showed the need for a platform—someone was already hacking together their own version because the idea mattered.”

Strickler remembers discovering her website in 2008 and immediately listing it as an influence on Kickstarter’s first splash page. “Two weeks after Kickstarter launched in 2009, she invited us to a show in Brooklyn. We went, met her in person, and became mutual fans. Jill showed how artists understand the cultural shifts they want to see and that they can build extraordinary things to get there.”

To many people, Sobule’s name is familiar, but her impact is even broader. She’s the force behind the original “I Kissed a Girl” (1995) and the razor-sharp satire of “Supermodel,” a defining moment of Clueless. Not to mention a body of songwriting beloved by fellow musicians. Jill was, as many fans might say, your favorite singer-songwriter’s favorite singer-songwriter.

That spirit–creative independence, humor, experimentation–also drew filmmaker Tom Ropelewski to her work. About two years ago, he began documenting Jill onstage and off: filming rehearsals for her autobiographical show F*CK 7th GRADE, traveling with her to Nashville for cast album recordings, and capturing performances across the country. The film began as a way to amplify the next chapter of her career and introduce her to audiences who might not realize they already knew her music.

But after Jill’s tragic passing in May of 2025, the project shifted. As Tom edited the footage, he found that the film resisted becoming an elegy. Jill is simply too alive on screen—funny, sharp, restless, curious. “When you see it,” he says, “you’ll just want to hang out with her, like I did, like everyone who knew her did.”

Now, with Tom’s new Kickstarter campaign for Jill Sobule: She’s Gonna Sing! You’re Gonna Listen! which launched last week, Sobule’s legacy enters a new chapter on the very platform she helped inspire. The project invites her community, old fans, and newly discovering listeners to help complete a film that captures her as she really was: inventive, generous, and endlessly in motion.

As Sobule once told The Creative Independent, “Someone told me once that the best thing you could feel as an artist is that you are providing something… If I play a concert and manage to entertain someone who was maybe feeling miserable… that is success.”

This new campaign is another extension of that philosophy. A way for her work to keep offering connection, comfort, and joy, whether to one person or a million.