Reminds me of when Bobby Newport stole Knope’s heartwarming tale of support in the face of failure, but changed it and said “…And I won!”
I think the underlying realization for The Devil Went Down to Georgia is more that Americans will listen to good music even if they don’t agree with the lyrics.
The same goes for Imagine by John Lennon, for example.
I love lyrics but i’ve found that most people I talk to about lyrics have no idea or don’t pay attention
Imagine regularly gets changed to exclude the most ‘objectionable’ lines.
I loved Cee-Lo until his cover of it at [some event I forgot]. He changed “and no religion” to “and all religions” which…just totally butchers the meaning of the song. It’s about a world where people are good to each other just because
I’m not an angry atheist but that really, really bugged me. Really spitting on his grave.
What part of the lyrics of Devil Went Down to Georgia do you think people are disagreeing with?
I don’t understand your point. People don’t agree with the song because they believe the lyrics would be different if it were written somewhere else? I’m confused what you’re trying to say.
We are Americans! Arrogance is our life’s blood, ambition is our food and drink, but most of all, hubris is the air we breathe!
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Quintessons_(Transformers)
I was just going to throw the quote away, but now it’s getting to me. Why does the idea of Americans as Quintessons work so well? They’re ruled by capricious five-faced nutters, and their five faces are known as “death, wrath, laughter, bitterness, and doubt”. The only thing we haven’t got going for us is superintelligence, but in fairness Quintessons have acted pretty stupid sometimes.
The devil in the song is in a bind and ready to make a deal, which is a little different from other Faustian tales.
Maybe the lesson is that you don’t make good music when you’re under pressure.
Or that gold fiddles sound bad.
Of course he sounded better, he had a whole band backing him up!
The Devil trying to cheat the contest is baked into the song musically.
Something else worth noting - the licks the Devil plays on the fiddle sound good but are easy to play. Johnny’s licks are legitimately complex. He beat that sucker fair and square.
To add to this, the lyrics during the section where Johnny plays are about four traditional fiddle songs that aren’t played in the song itself: Fire on the Mountain, The House of the Rising Sun, Ida Red, and Granny Will Your Dog Bite. I think in the same way that the lyrics of Tenacious D - Tribute make it clear that Tribute is a representation of the greatest song in the world and not the greatest song itself, the music we hear from Johnny’s section is supposed to represent but not be the music he played to beat the Devil.
If you ignore all the folk tales about people one upping the devil or the local equivalent… everywhere, yes, it’s a uniquely American trait.
Don’t those involve creative approaches and tricking or otherwise outsmarting the devil or local equivalent?
This is just Johnny being better than the devil and having a massive ego about it. That specific situation tends to be punished.
Johnny having a massive ego about it is a great sin of Pride, and so the devil ends up getting his soul anyway.
It’s not pride if you give fair warning that you just actually are that good. The devil was the boastful one challenging someone and not being able to back it up
