Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

May 3rd 2012 11:32 am

I heard the song when it was new and on the radio. Everyone talked about it, why billy joe had suicided, and most of all what he and the narrator had thrown off the bridge. Almost 45 years later, the song gives me chills.

Mar 27th 2012 7:58 pm

I think billy joe and another girl had a kid and he killed himself because he felt bad they got rid of it

Mar 14th 2012 3:30 pm

In the made for theater movie with robbie benson(billy joe) and glennis o'conner(bobbie lee),she had a small ragdoll she always kept with her, he teased her about it ,said she was a baby for havin' a doll and it was time to grow up & get rid of it. He dropped her ragdoll off the bridge accidently, teasing her, acting like he was gonna drop it, then did. They were madly in love. (she was 15 he was 17 i think) they had sex once & were talkin' marriage, then he was raped by his boss at the sawmill the night before the suicide, her brother was leaving work & their boss asked billy joe to stay late. He told bobbie lee about it, she said it wasn't his fault blah blah, he couldn't handle the shame & felt he was no longer a man and he killed himself so she could find a "real man" to love. She was the only one at the table who knew any of this plot line,so she was devestated but couldn't show it. She was pregnant & went to live with relatives in tupelo til she had the baby/ which she gave up for adoption then moved back home. It was the same relatives her brother & his new wife becky bought the store from. Not said but i think it was payment for keeping bobbie lee & her secret. Seems like the whole movie timeline is just one summer or a few weeks of summer, so the dinnertime conversation was like a snapshot of the events of that coming of age first love tragedy. Its a great movie made from an even greater song. I love the way she makes a point of their activities & other conversation not matching the seriousness of the event in relation to her feelings about it... They're just like and in other news blah blah, while she is reeling from the blow. I didn't see the made for tv movie mentioned above with the boy in the tent.

Feb 27th 2012 12:34 am

There was a movie on the basis of the song. If i remember
Correctly billy joe was raped by men, that caused him to jump off
The bridge. The girl was his best friend. I don't remember the name
Of the movie but robbie benson and glyniss o' conner starred in it.

Feb 26th 2012 6:16 am

Maybe she and billy joe threw her aborted baby off the bridge and thats why he killed himself.

Feb 17th 2012 3:30 pm

Em says:

The only ethnicity in this story was your basic southern white folks. No need to go any further than that. Plenty of drama to be had without adding things that aren't there. I remember when this song came out. That wasn't in there.
As for a baby, it would have needed to be within the first trimester or it would have been noticed.
Could billy have been gay? Possibly. But you know after all these years, the mystery is what makes this song still resonate.

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!

Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Bobbie Gentry Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Bobbie Gentry
Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Bobbie Gentry Ode To Billy Joe lyrics

Bobbie GentryOde To Billy Joe lyrics

Bobbie Gentry
Ode To Billy Joe lyrics