Categories
Music

How much is Johnny’s soul worth to the Devil?

We all know the lyrics to the song, DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA:

if you’d care to take a dare I’ll make a bet with you.
Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the Devil his due.
I’ll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul ’cause I think I’m better than you

So what the Devil is proposing in his offer is that Johnny (who plays pretty good fiddle, boy) has a soul that’s only worth a golden fiddle.

The question is, is Johnny getting ripped off a bit?

Devil Went Down to Georgia
Devil Went Down to Georgia

That’s the theory behind some GOLDEN FIDDLE ANALYSIS that was done to determine exactly HOW MUCH JOHNNY’S SOUL IS WORTH in the song THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA.

And the end result is that Johnny bet the devil his soul in exchange for $167,000 (calculated in 1979 dollars).

They came to this conclusion by determining that a golden fiddle would weigh about 40 pounds, which would then be split into “troy ounces” for conversion into easy-to-calculate gold measures.  Trust us when we say $167,000… or $540,600 in today’s dollars… was the correct figure.

The article does some other analysis on deals the Devil makes when buying one’s soul — and they’ve determined that on average — based on the known figures available such as a golden fiddle — a soul is worth $2.8 million.

Give or take.

The question is — if you were offered $2.8 million to sell YOUR soul, would you be getting the better end of the bargain, or would the Devil be coming off with a deal of his own?