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.
According to conventional wisdom, Johnny damned himself by accepting the bet in the first place. The devil “loses”, but that just cements Johnny’s sin of pride.
The devil might not have gotten Johnny’s soul the day of the contest, but make no mistake, he does eventually get the soul.
Well if you’re religious. There’s a whole class of individuals in the South that get off on showing the religious just how little they care for the tenets of Christianity. In addition to playing a mean fiddle, Johnny probably swears like a sailor and has extramarital sex whenever he can.
The song came out in 1979. The Southern Rebel was a big concept in the culture.
Nah. Conventional wisdom says he can either
- the the priest all about it and do some chants
- find himself a baptizer and spend the rest of his time Jesusing real hard.
Johnny’s options will depend on his local wise man, but I suspect either way he’ll also be strongly encouraged to buy some merch.
Yes and no. While the rules are all made up, and different people can just make up more rules, the standard rules say that any deal with the devil, even this bet, is a sin, an unforgivable sin. Adding in the sin of pride, which means Johnny is unlikely to ever repent, and the devil got a soul.
Also, there’s a sequel song with a bunch of big names on the project, Johnny went down due to the sin of pride.
Christianity’s whole thing is that no sin is unforgivable (except deliberate rejection of the Holy Spirit’s work/testimony about Jesus (Mark 3:20-28))
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
The boy said, “My name’s Johnny and it might be a sin
But I’m gon’ take your bet and you’re gonna regret
I’m the best there’s ever been”He’s boasting about it before, and gloating about it after. But the devil is expected to sin, so it doesn’t matter. Johnny on the other hand knows he’s being boastful, and goes and does it anyway.
