Mr. Daniels,
I hope this open letter finds you well. I apologize that we weren’t able to meet in person. I would’ve just erupted violently from the crust of the earth like I usually do, but I’m feeling a little under the weather today.
I’m writing this from Hell to deliver a message from the Devil himself. I am of course, Mr. Satan’s head legal counsel. Let’s get this out of the way: YES, I realize that I am a literal representation of the common parlance “Devil’s advocate.” Great. Have a little chuckle. See if I care. I’ve held this position for several centuries now and the health benefits are great.
I’m getting distracted. My point, Mr. Daniels, is that you’ve blatantly breached our terms and conditions. In your hit song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” you reveal the full details of a past settlement between my client (Satan) and a young man named Johnny. There’s a delay in the time it takes popular music to reach the depths of Hell, but let me assure you, when “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” started streaming from Satan’s Spotify account, he was not happy.
The agreement between the Devil and Johnny was supposed to be kept strictly confidential. This should have been obvious. I don’t need to explain why we want the Devil’s bidding to be private information. We have no reason to be transparent with our business. We aren’t a non-profit. I’ll even go on record and say that there is a definite profit being made from the souls we’re collecting.
I know exactly what you’re going to say. You think that we broke the terms and conditions too. That can’t be further from the truth. I quote from your lyrics:
“He pulled his bow across the strings
And it made an evil hiss.
And a band of demons joined in
And it sounded something like this…”
Yes. An entire orchestra of demons wielding their own cursed instruments joined in with Lucifer and played along with him. I know this seems unfair and may have warranted the settlement void, but I insist: nowhere in writing was “summoning a large backing band for accompaniment” forbidden! It may have seemed like a funny prank or some sort of flash-mob symphony at the time, but I repeat that it was not mentioned in the signed deal.
Further on in your song you recount the part where Johnny concluded his solo and notified Satan that his playing, with minion choir and all, was inferior. This would have been enough. The Devil knew this himself. However it is now public knowledge that Johnny said, and I quote from your lyrics again:
“Devil, just come on back
If you ever wanna try again.
I done told you once, you son of a bitch
I’m the best there’s ever been.”
Initially, I was deeply offended that Johnny chose to curse out my client. The competition had been fair and such slanderous behavior was unjustified! We recovered from this, though, and carried on with the agreement, giving Johnny the golden fiddle he had rightfully won. However, this all changed last week when we were informed that you have publicized the entire affair and besmirched the Devil’s name to the billions of people who had listened to your song worldwide. Satan is now very concerned about his reputation on earth.
Because of this, Lucifer has changed his mind. He accepts Johnny’s offer. He does wish to “come on back and try again.” He also wanted me to add that this time he’s not going to leave empty-soul-cavity’d like before. Normally we would address this proposal directly to Johnny, but you omitted his last name from the song lyrics, so we were unable to find him. The Rolodex containing his contact information was unfortunately burnt to ashes because we live in a pit of fire and everything is eternally ablaze.
In summary, we will be filing a lawsuit for the first duel and want to set up a rematch. Could you tell Johnny that we’re offering a Golden Apple Watch this time?
Sin-cerely,
The Devil’s Advocate
