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.
The devil came to JOHNNY, not the other way around. The moral of the story is not that it is possible to beat the devil out of ego or for glory, but that even the devil could not defeat a man completely dedicated to his pure, uncorrupted love for a craft. It’s not a story about Johnny’s hubris winning out, it’s a story about the respect one should have for genuine passion when it is lovingly applied to creativity. It is a story about the indomitable human spirit.
But okay, America bad or whatever, sure.
There’s plenty of stories from other countries about the cunning hero outsmarting the fae or similar. Just that in America, the hero always wins vs other countries where there are also many stories where the hero gets killed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe, two of America’s most famous writers, both based their bodies of work on people paying the price of losing to temptation/sin. Although to be fair I couldn’t think of any popular songs about that.
I know it’s not a popular take, but I don’t like Poe or Hawthorne. I always felt like their shallow exploration of death/edgy topics really only appealed to the immature or unintelligent reader.
I can see their work on a shelf between The Nightmare Before Christmas and a Dashboard Confessional CD- maybe a Jr High textbook as well.
I wouldn’t use them as an example.
It’s unpopular because instead of just saying you don’t like them or personally think they lack depth you go straight to insulting their readers and fans.
I don’t like them, but they’re also bad and unintelligent. Those are objective. Sorry if someone not liking a vapid old guys who can’t write their way out of a paper bag makes you feel attacked.
That’s subjective not objective…
No. It’s objective. Objectively they are unimpressive. “Well that’s just your opinion man” isn’t a defence.
You clearly don’t know what the words mean. Someone is being impressed or unimpressed.
It’s rooted in the tradition of American machismo and braggadocio. Hyperbole is a huge part of the American oral tradition. You go to any small town in the Southern US and the old timers will have some tall tales that beggar belief and they will tell them too you as if it were the gospel with no winks or nods.
I think Devil Went Down to Georgia is supposed to be viewed as a boast by Johnny himself. “I’m a really good fiddle player.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, this one time I beat the Devil himself.” “I told you once you sonofabitch, I’m the best there’s ever been.”
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