Ever since I was a little kid I have kind of been intrigued by mysteries. I'm not sure if it was all that time watching Scooby Doo, or the random occasions when I actually picked up a book and it just happened to be the Hardy Boys. Actually, let's talk about the Hardy Boys for a second. Have you ever ready any of those books? I mean the really old original ones. I'm honestly shocked they weren't walking around with permanent brain damage from all the times they got knocked out. I feel like in just about every book one or both of them gets knocked out.
Talk about concussion protocol... They would have been the poster children for it.
As I got older, I graduated from The Hardy Boys and again on the random occasion that I would read a book, I found myself reading Clive Cussler and other treasure hunt style books like that. What is a treasure hunt except one great big mystery that needs to be solved right?
Well, that's what this post is going to be about today. You might have thought that the topic of this #threetunetuesday post sponsored by @ablaze was going to be all Sarah McLachlan based on the title. However, I'm choosing not to be quite so specific this week. Instead, I am going to present you three songs that tell the story of a mystery.
Now, you might be wondering what a photo of jellyfish has to do with mysteries. The fact is, I wasn't sure what photo(s) to use for this post today, so I went to my Google Photos and I typed in the word "mystery". That was one of the first photos that came up, so there you go.
Besides YouTube which I usually use to share songs with you for these posts, today I am going to be using another tool. It's a site called SongFacts and if you have never visited it before, you totally should. This site breaks down all the questions you ever had about almost any song with commentary and conjecture from people all over the world. For example, say you had a question about what a specific song means or who played backing drums on a song. Songfacts uses crowdsourcing to pull a wealth of information from a worldwide audience to usually answer all of those questions. Keep reading and you will see what I mean.
"Hazard" by Richard Marx is a haunting song about a young man who moved to a small town called Hazard Nebraska with his mom and as he grows up there he is eventually accused of killing his girlfriend. As it says in the song, "I swear I left her by the river", I swear I left her safe and sound". We never do find out what happened to Mary his girlfriend and like the other songs I am going to share, this open ended mystery without a solution is part of what makes these songs so special.
It gives you the opportunity to decide for yourself what might have actually happened and let's be honest, sometimes that can be a lot darker than the factual events. SongFacts has some good tidbits about this song. Feel free to jump over there and check them out if if you get a chance.
People disappearing seems to be a bit of a theme, but I would argue "Ode to Billie Joe" is quite possibly one of the OG songs about that subject. Bobby Gentry didn't ever really become a household name, but she is definitely most well known for this song. Billie Joe was actually a man, and if you listen to the lyrics, we know quite well what happened to him.
In case you missed it, it was suicide.
Where the mystery comes into this song is the fact that it is being told from the point of view of a girl who apparently knew Billie Joe quite well. In fact, there is a line in the song about her and Billie Joe throwing something off the same bridge that Billie Joe would later throw himself off.
Pretty mysterious right?
It's been asked several times what was actually thrown off the bridge and according to SongFacts the original artist would like to leave that open to interpretation. Her main focus was how casual and indifferent the people were while talking about the fact that a young man had killed himself. Apparently desensitizing isn't a new thing.
I think the largest held theory is that they threw a baby or a stillborn baby off the bridge, but I will leave that up to you to decide...
Finally, I'm going to leave you with a little more upbeat song, but mysterious nonetheless. "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image is a 1970 classic about a ship of 73 men sailing off into history, but we never really know what that means. I also felt this song fit really well because of the lyric in the chorus that says "Ride captain ride upon your mystery ship". I remember as a kid my dad talking about this song and how he always wondered what happened to the men and the ship.
There isn't a ton of info on SongFacts about this one, but someone did remember an interview with the lead singer where he said the 73 men actually came from the fact that there were 73 keys on his piano keyboard.
Several people feel the song was referring to Sir Francis Drake, but in reality, it was a totally made up scenario because they needed another song for the album and apparently Mike Pinera and Skip Konte pretty much wrote it on the spot in the studio.
Like all the others, purely made, but, but open to interpretation and fueling alcohol and drug infused late night discussions for centuries.
Pretty crazy right?
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