Happy 81st Birthday to Mysterious Bobbie Gentry

@Gusman It's not even clear she ever intended for there to be any answers to those questions, thus increasing the intrigue. There was a movie years later, "Ode to Billy Joe," with a fictionalized plot apparently thought up well after the song became famous.

@graphite Some have posited it is a narrative about societal attitudes.
A suicide has occurred, around the dinner table it gets but a passing mention,
"I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge, Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow.

And Papa said to mama "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please,. There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"

@Gusman yes there is so much going on in those seemingly simple lyrics!!

@Gusman "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please" Great storytelling. This song scared the hell out of me when I was 6-7 years old, and it was played on the radio all day long.

@graphite Personally I never took a lot of notice of song lyrics when I was young. At least not the meanings of the song. I liked the tunes, some songs had easy lyrics, so I ended up liking the song.
That said, the Skyhooks song, Horror Movie scared me so much I ended up sleeping under the blankets, lest a monster would eat my exposed flesh. 😄

@Gusman I guess the song lyrics that affect me the most are the lyrics to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

@Lilnonames Photo taken around 2014. The only photo of her seen since the 1980s. A Washington Post reporter a few years ago claims to have had her on the phone just long enough to say, "There's no one here by that name" before she hung up.