Johnny Faust is the lead singer for the highly successful rock band The Relentless in Amazon Prime Video's new series Paradise City. The series finds members of The Relentless broke and forced to return to the spotlight after disappearing from the music industry for a year following the events that happened during their original rise to fame in the 2017 film American Satan. Once again, the band becomes all the rage, but Johnny struggles to balance the expectations of the public with his personal desires for a quiet life with his fiancé, Gretchen.
Paradise City is a spin-off of American Satan, which document’s how The Relentless made a deal with the Devil to express their rise to fame. However, when he got to the top of the world, Johnny did not like everything that came with it. He found himself in prison multiple times, his girlfriend dumped him and he nearly died from an overdose because he was using drugs to cope with his new life. In fact, Johnny was the reason that the band disappeared; he wanted to walk away from music and live a life with Gretchen. Now, Johnny is pressured to return by his bandmates, but the pressures of the public eye and divulging his past actions are what worry him the most.
Johnny stopped all of his dealings with the Devil, but one incident in particular still haunts him. One night on tour, a teenage groupie begged for him to have sex with her, and he accepted while another band member did the same with the teen’s mother. After the fact, Johnny learned that the teen’s father killed himself after the incident. Now, he is haunted by the fact that he ruined this girl’s life.
He regrets his past sins so much that he wrote the song lyric, “Forgive me, mother, for I have sinned by being what my father's always been.” Johnny never knew his father, and he cannot shake the thought that he might have done the exact same thing if that teen had a child after their time together. He soon finds out his worst fear came true -- the teen had a child. Although Johnny has an opportunity to claim his kid as his own, he refuses, fearing what Gretchen might do if she discovers that he already has a child.
With all of this controversy weighing on him, Paradise City Season 1, Episode 6, “Sing It to Her Face,” shows Johnny and The Relentless going to meet with a controversial music producer in New Orleans. Levi Svengali is a famous producer, but he is most known because one of his former clients committed suicide after releasing an album with him. Although not considered legally responsible, the rumor is that Svengali pushed the client over the edge psychologically because his motto seems to be that “tortured artists make the best songs.” Johnny’s past and current struggles are a prime target for him to exploit.
The song he writes under Svengali perfectly captures Johnny’s emotions about his past sins because he knows that the public’s perception of him is far from his actual reality. That’s why he sings, “I’m no hero.” He is caught between the pressures of acting like the perfect Rockstar and knowing that he messed up. He is living a lie to the public and to his fiancé, and the only way to vent is by pouring his heart into his song lyrics. Near the end of the series, Svengali even tells Johnny that he needs to write a song about being “blinded by the light of expectations.” Although it's not the nicest sentiment, Svengali seems to be right about tortured artists making the best songs. However, Paradise City highlights that the entertainment industry may be too quick to take advantage of that fact.
Paradise City is streaming now on Amazon's Prime Video. It starts Andy Biersack, Ben Bruce, James Cassells, Booboo Stewart, Bella Thorne, Mark Boone Junior, Drea de Matteo, Rhys Coiro, Amanda Steele, Olivia Culpo and Cameron Boyce.
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