A Comparative Study of Apollo and Ville Valo

Apollo is the god of many things, mainly music and medicine. He is believed to come from the northern invaders of Greece who viewed him as either the sun god or as the Good Sheppard. Ville Valo is a Finnish musician that has a huge following. He is the creator of his own genre of music, called Love Metal and is currently in a band called H.I.M.

Apollo is a man of twenty-five years of age with a perfect body, thick hair, light eyes, and overall he has a handsome face. Thousands of screaming teenagers can confirm exactly the same features for Ville Valo. The only difference between Apollo and Valo is that Ville has dark hair and Apollo is usually depicted as a blonde.

When Ville Valo is performing at his concerts, he moves about the stage with a graceful swagger, swinging his hips from side to side, but there is certain coldness about him, just like there is about Apollo. Ville Valo is completely aware of his attractivess and acts a little reproachful to the young fans that admire him. Ville Valo also dresses much like Apollo would have dressed as well. His clothes are very revealing; he is not at all afraid to show his perfect body. Ville Valo is not only a pretty face. Much like Apollo, he is very intelligent. He is constantly reading and openly inspired by authors of the past. He is very interested in music, history and philosophy which in turn gives his music a richness that can only be provided by a deep knowledge of the history of the ages. He also likes to deeply immerse himself into literature and has huge libraries, much like Apollo.

Apollo’s character has many contradictions. Sometimes he is compassionate, other times he is ruthless. He is the epitome of Greek standard, the Kalos Kai Agathos. He is the man behind the whole theory of the golden mean, which means that the middle way to everything he does is the best way, but he does not always follow this mean. In many myths, he loses his temper, especially when Tityus tried to rape his mother Leto.

Ville Valo is also very temperamental. When writing music he is in a very unstable state; during an interview, he confided that while writing one of the albums, he would lash out against the band members and feel remorse later. Since he is the leader of the band, he is usually very level headed because he has to guide the band members the way Apollo guides the Greeks with his golden mean. Ville Valo also contradicts himself on stage, because even though he seems like the type to be completely confident about himself, in the beginning of his career, he would close his eyes and sing would his back to the audience because he was unable to keep his nerves calm. Later in his career, he would drink and his behavior on stage would be completely unpredictable because he would be totally inebriated. Luckily, he has faced his fears since then, and now drinks only in moderation, much like Apollo’s golden mean.

Additionally, for someone that advocates the golden middle, he falls in love with a lot of women, which was considered the brink of insanity at the time. Daphne is a human girl who Apollo falls in love with, and that is the reason why the laurel leaf is so sacred to him and often symbolizes Apollo. Daphne turned into a laurel tree after being pursued by Apollo; she did not love him because Apollo got into an argument with cupid over who is the best archer. Cupid was angered by this challenge and took two arrows. He dipped one arrow in gold and the other in lead. The gold tipped one hit Apollo and made him fall in love with Daphne and the lead one went into Daphne’s heart and made her be completely indifferent to any kind of love, especially Apollo’s. This is much like the love life of Ville Valo, who was in a long-term relationship with a girl named Susanna. She was the inspiration to him for every song he wrote and his obsession for her scared her off. This love affair gives birth to the symbol he uses to represent his music, the heartagram. Since then, Ville Valo has fallen in love numerous times, and much like Apollo, he has terrible luck with the ladies and it has not worked out for him, but the music that is the child of these affairs is beautiful.

Apollo is divine and excellent in art; he is also especially excellent in music. He proved his talent many times over when creatures, like Marsyas, challenged him for example. Ville was also constantly challenged by his producers and by the metal community who think of his genre as a joke. Nonetheless, his music has prevailed and he is still one of the top musicians globally to this very day. There are also many bands that challenged him, but they all disappeared in a sea of similar music, much like Marsyas, who as a result of the contest with Apollo, vanquished.

Due to the intense appreciation for knowledge, musical and otherwise, that Ville Valo has, combination of incomparable good looks, it can easily said that he is a modern day Apollo and he is unmistakably Kalos Kai Agathos.