The Devil Came Up To Boston
The Devil Came Up To Boston Lyrics
He was looking for some balls to break
He just got in from Quincy
Where he'd rained out a lobster bake
At the Copley T he saw a kid
Sawing on a fiddle and smoking a butt
The devil jumped up on a Globe dispenser
Said, "Dude, let me tell you what:
"I bet you didn't know it kid
But I can fucking strum
You may think you're all hot shit
But you're just a fucking bum
I've rocked all the hot spots
From the Garden to the Wang
I'll bet a Lotto card and a pack of Marlbs
That you can't fucking hang."
The kid said, "My name's Sully
And you're a stupid fuck
But if you wanna party
I'm game to earn a buck."
Sully, rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard
Shit's going down in Boston and the Devil deals the cards
You could win a Lotto card and pack of Marlboros
But if you lose the Devil gets your soul
And said, "I'll fucking start."
Fire shot from his finger tips
Damn that shit was hot
The screech across the strings
Got the subway cops all pissed
Then the Dropkick Murphys showed up
And it sounded something like this...
Sully said, "Good job, but I hear that shit like every hour
I'm gonna rip it up now, then you can take a fuckin shower."
Oil in the harbor, watch out sailor
Bringing in steamers on a Boston Whaler
Cocked in Mattapan, stealing a truck
Yuppies in Southie, what the fuck?
The Devil shouted "Pissah!" cause he knew he’d just been tossed
He started chugging vodka to soften up the loss
Sully shouted, "Devil, come on back if you ever wanna press your luck
I told you once, you hard-on, you’re a wicked stupid fuck."
About
Whereas the Charlie Daniels Band song “The Devil Came Down To Georgia” contains a number of references about the deep south taken from folk songs, AEG’s parody “The Devil Came Up To Boston” employs liberal use of a stereotypical non-rhotic Boston Accent to replace the original lyrics with the city’s unique lexicon, its locations & attractions, and a number of phrases commonly associated with the region. Specifically, the protagonist of the song is from ‘Southie’ (South Boston) – a role also famously portrayed in the film Good Will Hunting.
After AEG added a full-time fiddle player, Ezra heard “The Devil Came Down To Georgia” and suggested to the band they do a parody of it with a Boston theme. It was finished within 24 hours. Crowd response was so positive at shows while touring the mid-West that the band pre-scheduled an ‘emergency recording session’ for when they returned to New England.
A music video for the song was shot in January and posted to YouTube on June 12, 2013. It immediately went viral locally – garnering over 40,000 views in just a few days.
After a copyright infringement complaint was registered, the video was pulled from YouTube. But the band “contested it and the video went back up”. Within four weeks, views on YouTube had reached 100,000. Local media outlets like The Boston Globe and Boston Magazine reported on its sudden popularity, and its controversy.
As of May 2018, the number of views had exceeded 700,000 “which for us, a little indie Boston band, is a big deal”.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
Adam Ezra told Boston Magazine:
We’d just started touring heavily with a fiddle player. I’d been writing a lot of original music that incorporated that sound. One day I was listening to the radio or something, and Charlie Daniels’ amazing song came on. I mentioned to the band that I should try writing a Boston version of the song. We all laughed at the idea. Twenty-four hours later it was done! … The first time we played it was in front of a 1,500 country fans in the midwest who didn’t know a thing about Boston. Even still, they loved it. It’s all we heard about after the show. We played it every night for the rest of the tour—same reaction every night. By the time we were heading home to Boston, we had scheduled an “emergency recording session,” and had begun working on ideas for the video.
