Ode to Ode | MetaFilter:
Someone once said that "Ode To Billy Joe" sounded ancient the day it came out and that may be some part of its appeal.
yes it does sound ancient. familiar. reminiscent. essential ~ an essential story ~ legendary, mythical. classic.

-I'm old enough to remember when that song hit the radio and people had no idea whether Bobbie Gentry wore miniskirts or not when they heard the song. All they knew was they'd never heard anything like it and they wondered just what the hell did she and Billie Joe throw off that bridge.
The second biggest 'mystery song' of all time was 'Timothy' by the Buoys. Was it a man or a mule?

-It does sound ancient, it sounds as if it's about something very specific and legendary, which makes the fact that there don't seem to be any concrete answers about it that much more frustrating.

I thought the song was a mystery - is a secret from within a mystery from without? - but not of so pointed a question (what did they throw off the bridge?). simple in my sense of it: they were flowing throwers off the bridge together. they were friends, maybe in love. her family has no idea. she is alone with the loss, we do not know what he was to her. that's her secret, our mystery. ~ not so different from how it would be for anyone losing someone. others are outside, talking and passing the blackeyed peas; the person who was in it with you is gone.

-Ms. Gentry was always cryptic about it. Saying that what they trew wasn't the point, that it's the surrounding events that matter, and she may be right. But you cant help but be drawn in by the mystery anyway, I guess.

-If in fact, they are referring to throwing a child off the bridge, it would fit squarely in the tradition of the appalachian "murder ballad" promulgated by the likes of Dock Boggs, or Clarence Ashley who did the best known version of the chilling example of the form "Omie Wise". "OTBJ" is both an excellent example of Bobbie Gentry's talent and ear for tradition , and how deeply those traditions are embedded even in this mass media saturated age, and of how tradition and popular culture can be reconciled.

-I love how the one lengthy interpretation of the song explains that it couldn't be a baby they were throwing off the bridge, because the song says they were throwing it, and it doesn't take two people to throw a baby! I think that if someone saw two people at a bridge together, one of them throwing something, that witness would say they were throwing something off the bridge.

-In 1993, Sinead O'Connor did a fantastic cover of the song, for the Warchild benefit album.
-this thread made me drag out the Sinead cover, and my wife noticed that in the faint background immediately after the "throwing something off the Tallahatchee bridge" line, there's an unmistakable infant cry. Having never heard this interpretation before, my mind had always glossed over the sound. Now, it's completely creepy, raises the hair on my arms. well I can easily imagine that when Sinead covers it, it is a story where they threw their baby in the river.

"up on Choctaw Ridge, picking flowers".. I see Harold, playing guitar up on the grassy hill after Maude is gone.


-And as for "Me and Julio" [So, what did Julio and the protagonist do behind down by the schoolyard?]:
It took becoming an adult to realize that Paul Simon had no idea. As a kid, I figured that all the adults in the world understood perfectly well what the mama saw, and that I'd know someday.