It would be easy to mock the Louvin Brothers’ “Satan Is Real”, with its lurid and rather literal cover. Easy that is, until you listen to a song of evident sincerity. We are all surely familiar with doing things against our better nature, against our best interests, for no good reason, repeating the same patterns of destruction (whether overt or silent destruction). We have all experienced Poe’s Imp of the Perverse, or the corrosive effect of hatred, or the numbing effect of indifference. The Louvin Brothers, or rather the Loudermilk brothers, themselves had turbulent lives, and it would be a fool who would mock this song of all the broken people baffled by the incomprehensible entry of evil into their lives. Which, sadly, will turn out to be all of us.
Séamus Sweeney 