Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Dec 10th 2011 12:50 pm

The lion's share of our pain and suffering shall be borne alone

Nov 6th 2011 5:26 am

Take it as a simple song, and a song where something minor is blown up to tragic proportions, although similar things happen every year.

The narrator refused to have a romantic relationship with billy joe. The song notes things two friends might have done together -- talk after church and go with a group of friends to see a movie -- and even a move that a teenage guy might do if he was interested in a girl: put a frog down her dress. What the preacher saw was billy joe and the narrator talking a possible romantic relationship and the narrator refusing. What they tossed into the river has something to do with them being together.

Billy joe could not handle the rejection and committed suicide. The narrator doesn't think too much about it -- presumably she likes billy joe as a friend but not that kind of friend -- until she is told that billy joe has committed suicide. Thus she loses her appetite.

It couldn't be a pregnancy -- at least in the 60s. Pregnancies tend to show and the narrator would be showing long before billy joe jumped off the bridge. Also, in a rural area like the part of mississippi where the song is set, there weren't readily available back alley abortion providers. So, it has to be something more simple and i believe that teenage angst over a rejected romantic overture is the answer...

Oct 28th 2011 10:21 am

For years bobbie gentry would not elaberarte on what the great secert was that drove billie joe to take his life. I don't believe that a pregnant girl would have been enough to cause this. Even with a interracial theme. In those days a white girl and a black guy had a relationship the area red necks would have killed the boy. If it would have been the black gilr and a white boy then the white boy would have bragged about have done the black girl.
Now in those days if it were two white kids then the family would have forced a marriage to save the girls rep. So the only thing left to speculate is the sexual identity of the boy. Almost anything else would have been something the boy could have lived with but in those days the boy would have been beat to death for being gay and there would have been no one who would have cared, there is the only reason i could see for a teenage boy would or could take their life.
Even today so many gay teens kill them selves because of the way sociatity treats gay teens. They are told all their lives that being gay is the worst thing they can be. So what else in those days could a gay teen do but kill them selves.

Oct 14th 2011 11:29 am

I'm not sure where this "mixed race" theory comes from--maybe just the era? But i don't know any blacks named "macallister. " if anyone was black, it was the girl. I also don't understand the "gay" theory. Her and billie joe are obviously in love, but her mama is pushing her towards the "nice young preacher. " i'd say choctaw ridge is the "white trash" part of town because "nothing good" ever came out of it. It sounds to me like the movie people are describing took a lot of liberties. If the preacher was close enough to recognize the girl, he would have been close enough to recognize a dead body of a grown man. An aborted or suffocated baby, however, would be a nondescript little package. To tell the truth though, i think this song is much more powerful, because it doesn't spell it out. These lyrics have haunted me for years!

TBass · May 18th 2011 10:55 pm

I think they threw a baby off the bridge that -either the girl didn't want to have or that miscarried. Billy joe wanted the baby (or was upset about loosing it) and committed suicide. The family figured out what they had done and was distraught over loosing their grandchild..

Songbird52 · Jun 14th 2010 2:19 pm

I can certainly see how a mixed baby approach could be derived. I think i thought the same at the time just going by the words of the song when it first aired on the radio, until the made-for-tv movie came out in the 1970's. Heck, i suspected the network rewrote the story with edits to leave out the mixed baby concept because white society wasn't ready to consider mixed relationships yet. I remember being upset that their explanation in the movie didn't jive with the song on so many levels. But considering, slavery was over by then, and whites had to pick their own cotton and make their own blackeyed peas, i accepted their reasoning as to what was thrown from the bridge. If you ever see the movie, you'll see how tortured billy joe (robbie benson) was about his secret and it will make sense that no one would be as insane with confusion as he was over a baby, especially since the girl didn't share the same pain. She was just as in the dark as the viewers and pleaded with billy joe to tell her what he was agonizing over so she could help him. So, i knew right then, it wasn't a baby situation. And when she caught him with the boy, the look on her face in the movie told the whole story. So, if you were a fan of the song at that time, you bought the explanation because they made it make sense. Hunt for a copy and see for yourselves, america. It's a great "family film" piece of work!

Songbird52 · Jun 7th 2010 11:49 pm

The song implies what the movie revealed. Billy joe macallister was gay, couldn't handle it, couldn't understand it, couldn't live with it. He knew he couldn't let news like that get out in a small town. He'd never be able to live it down, similar to the brandon teena story, except teena's was murder. Still, they both tried to keep a secret of sexual orientation from the people they knew. So, billy joe tried sharing an intimate night in the woods with his dearest (girl) friend to prove to himself that he wasn't gay, to no avail. He now had to confide in his (girl) friend, his "shameful, unbearable truth". He thought she would understand, but she didn't. She freaked, vowing to never see him again. Until she caught him with a boy, in a tent, at the town fair, in a questionable position. She, now, knew that what billy joe had been trying to tell her was not a lie. She ran out of the tent in shock and disbelief as to what she had just witnessed. And her reaction made billy joe take it out on the boy in the tent. Suddenly, realizing the boy was no longer breathing, billy joe, in a panic disposed of the dead boy's body over the bridge with the help of his dear friend who had come back to apologize for her behavior. But now, billy joe had another secret he couldn't handle. And when it all became more than he could bear, he jumped off the bridge and killed himself.

dannynikki · May 31st 2010 6:55 am

I think that the thing that they threw off the bridge was there mixed race baby, that they had out of wedlock

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