The Byronic Hero is a type of character (an Anti-Hero, an Anti-Villain, or Just a Villain) popularized by the works of Lord Byron, whose protagonists often embodied this archetype, though they existed before him*
The name of the hero is largely good timing as it first came into prominence with Romantic writers of the time, like the Brontë sisters.
. Byronic Heroes are charismatic characters with strong passions and ideals, but who are nonetheless deeply flawed individuals who may act in ways which are socially reprehensible, and whose internal conflicts are heavily romanticized. Some of their attitudes and actions may be considered immoral, and their bad actions may be as numerous as those which are heroic, but never are they evil for evil's sake. Also, they have a large tendency to be Jerkass Woobies.
The following traits are very characteristic of Byronic Heroes and may be helpful in identifying them:
Is intensely introspective and may be described as dark and brooding. He dwells on the pains or perceived injustices of his life, often to the point of over-indulgence. May muse philosophically on the circumstances that brought him to this point, including personal failings.
He is extremely passionate, with strong personal beliefs which are usually in conflict with the values of the status quo. He sees his own values and passions as above or better than those of others, manifesting as arrogance or a martyr-like attitude.
His intense drive and determination to live out his philosophy without regard to others' philosophies produces conflict, and may result in a tragic end, should he fail, or revolution, should he succeed. This rebellion against the rules or values of the society he finds himself in, as well as a disrespect for rank/privilege *
he often has said rank and privilege himself
, often leads to social isolation, rejection, or exile.
Vampires are often written as this kind of character, as a way to romanticize an otherwise disturbing creature. Lord Byron himself was the inspiration for one of the first pieces of vampire literature, The Vampyre, by John William Polidori, Byron's personal physician. Oftentimes, to highlight their signature brooding aura, a Byronic Hero will be compared with creatures that have dark, supernatural connotations, with demons, ghosts, and of course, vampires, all being popular choices. Love Tropes are often involved with this character, but almost always in a very cynical, existential way. Don't hold your breath waiting for The Power of Love to redeem him.
The Byronic Hero has a tendency to be The Unfettered, rejecting the morals imposed by society to accomplish his goals, and may overlap with the Übermensch, who shares the Byronic Hero's sense of rebellion and superiority. Similarly, a particularly villainous Byronic Hero may be a Noble Demon, as the two follow their desires without care for others, but nonetheless have no interest in outright villainy or evil, and may perform good actions if it suits them to do so. More overlapping tropes include the Well-Intentioned Extremist, who, like the Byronic Hero, may do immoral or villainous acts in the name of some higher cause which would otherwise be a positive goal, as well as the Lovable Rogue, who shares the Byronic Hero's charisma, likability, and tendency to break the law.
They are quite often a Draco in Leather Pants, often in-universe as well, due to the magnetic All Girls Want Bad Boys appeal of this character. Frequently, a large part of their characterization involves and Awesome Ego, Manipulative Bastard, Deadpan Snarker, and Tall Darkand Snarky.
The Byronic Hero is closely related, but not to be confused with, a Tragic Hero or a Tragic Villain. Tragic Heroes suffer from a specific sin in particular, which is treated as their Tragic Flaw, and are often well-intentioned or otherwise blameless. While both characters may ultimately be defeated by their flaws, the Tragic Heroes and Tragic Villains tend to suffer more for them in the end, and include an Aesop. However, it's not unheard of to see characters who are both Byronic and Tragic heroes.
Byronic Hero may also overlap with Nominal Hero, a character who fights for good despite their lack of heroic intent.
Totally unrelated to Kari Byron. Or any series with a BionicHero.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Guts from Berserk is a notable example of this trope and fits most of the classical traits. He spent the years after the Eclipse wandering from town to town and killing Apostles, largely indifferent to the people he saved and hanging onto his humanity by a thread. However, he eventually starts to return to his original personality after he sees where his obsession with revenge has left him.
Manipulative Bastard Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass is massively arrogant, generally has no trouble with slaughtering his enemies, is fairly vengeful, and frequently lies to and keeps secrets from his own men, as well as his friends and family. The universe has screwed him over a couple of times. While Lelouch sincerely wants to make the world a better place, many of his methods are so devious and underhanded and his motives behind his actions are so self-serving that it's impossible to call him any other kind of hero. The director said that he specifically chose Jun Fukuyama to voice Lelouch on the grounds that his voice, along with the character's traits, would make him such that the viewer would side with him no matter what he'd say.
Suzaku also counts. Terrible, unmentioned crime haunting him? Check. Constant angst over that crime, to the point of becoming self destructive? Check. Passionate, with a willingness to sacrifice anything to his passions? Check. Conflicting emotions (regarding his devotion to his goal vs. his perceived duty to his people)? Check. Outcast? Check. A woman he loved, with the relationship ending in a manner which overshadowed his actions for the rest of his life? Check. To be more exact, he tries sacrificing himself under the guise of chivalry to both Britannia and supposedly Japan as an excuse to fulfill his death wish, but mostly serves to derail Lelouch's plans before they would otherwise bear maximum results. In season 2, he becomes even worse, descending into Knight Templar territory and conquering EU nations for Schneizel. He does eventually join Lelouch, but not before they're both broken beyond repair.
Zelgadis Graywords from Slayers, moreso in the anime than in the novels. His lifelong quest for a cure that could turn his chimeric body back into its former human state fits this trope, and toss in the fact that it was his own great-grandfather that did it (and manipulated him to horrific personal ends for a time after) and the fact that he's seenasattractive and amazing both in-universe and out, and you get this trope. Because of the more atoning and outright bloody reason for seeking it in the novels, it's either averted or a subtler version depending on your interpretation.
Alexander Row of Last Exile is a pretty good example. He's Tall, Dark, and Handsome, an officer and captain of his own one-of-a-kind Cool Airship, which he essentially stole from the government and is operating on his own, outside of the law. He is stoic, withdrawn, and brooding (half the time when we see him, he's just sitting in the dark alone), doesn't really listen to a damn thing anyone else tells him, and is driven by revenge and revolution. He's also an expert strategist with a crew that will follow him anywhere. He has a troubled past that is revealed to include a dead wife. The princess is also in love with him, and it's doomed to be unrequited. Oh, and he's a total badass.
Shinn Asuka from Gundam SEED Destiny, whose hate of ORB brings him much suffering.
The Celestial Being organization in Gundam 00. True, they are no saints but what makes them the heroic figures is their sincere awareness of how the world suffers from endless warfare. And they put their effort into ending it by force.
Werner Locksmith from Planetes. A genius engineer and businessman, he is a total sociopath who, by his own words, "can love only spaceships". He truly wants to bring a better life to humanity, but his emotional detachment makes him the epitome of Well-Intentioned Extremist, as he firmly believes that Utopia Justifies the Means.
Another example from the same series is Matou Kariya, who caves in to the vile way of his Complete Monster father so he can save the child of a woman he loves but couldn't marry. This vile way? Implant into his body a hive of magical worms that grant the ability to use magic. If he doesn't, his father will simply implant it to said child and make that child fight in the war. Ultimately he fails to save her and Sakura is doomed to painful years of torture and rape.
Grodek Ainoa from Mobile Suit Gundam AGE - Driven by tragic events from his past, a bit brooding, charismatic and with no problem remose wrecking all possible rules to achieve his goal.
After the Infinity Gauntlet affair and other bids for absolute power, Thanos of Titan often broods on the circumstances that led him to failure and plans his next attempt to take over the universe, destroy it, and/or woo the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death herself.
Lucifer, as presented in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and in his own series. Morpheus may initially give this impression, but is revealed to be more of a Tragic Hero as the series goes on, especially considering how he dies/kills himself in the end.
Like Dracula, Doctor Doom is a villainous example of the Byronic Hero. A poor Roma boy, brilliant in magic and science, carrying a grudge against his old classmate for showing him up as much as for any imagined sabotage, forever hiding his disfigured face. From nothing but a scholarship that ended in expulsion, he was able to conquer his homeland and make it into a technological power, styling himself king rather than merely dictator, and through it all, maintaining a sense of honour that somehow does not get in the way of his Magnificent Bastardry.
V of V for Vendetta certainly fills this trope for the comic book, being a dreamer who wishes to bring total anarchy to a corrupt and totalitarian government.
Hans von Hammer, the Enemy Ace, fits the archetype rather closely as a charismatic nobleman who hates war, but is very good at it. His ideals are often at odds with those of his country: true when fighting for Imperial Germany in World War One, and even moreso in War In Heaven, where he's fighting for Nazi Germany. And he's always extremely broody.
The version of Quirrel/Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality comes off as a byronic hero. That story's version of Harry Potter also has byronic tendencies, and Snape's nature as a canon byronic hero gets deconstructed.
The film leaves room for an alternative interpretation, though, where Bickle is merely a violent sociopath who simply got "lucky" in chosing a specific course, i.e. saving Jodie Foster's character, as opposed to murdering a politician.
V from V for Vendetta. He has a mysterious past and is verbosely eloquent, cultured, charismatic, brooding, and defiant of the authority that has wronged him. At the same time, he is driven by vengeance, murderous, sadistic, subversive, and wantonly destructive.
Villain Protagonist Tony Montana from Scarface is completely this. He's a vicious, violent sociopath who murders and betrays his way to the top of the Miami drug lord heap, who also refuses to harm women and children at pretty much the cost of his own life because it breaks his personal code of honor.
Martin Blank from Grosse Pointe Blank. As a man who recognized that he was a sociopath from a young age, he chose to exile himself rather that inflict misery on his friends. He does develop some humanity at the end, but still remained a Career Killer.
Michael Mann seems to love this trope. In both Heat and Public Enemies, the villains are made at least as sympathetic as the heroes. Sure, they steal for a living, carry automatic weapons, and are responsible for the deaths of both police and civilians, but...They only steal from banks and other criminals, they don't kill if they don't have to, they're loyal to their friends, and charming to the point where you want to cheer for them.
Lord Byron's semi-autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage contains one of the earliest Byronic Heroes to be actually named as such.
Lord Ruthven of the novella The Vampyre, as well as the Lord Ruthven from a novel by Lady Lamb above, both based on Byron. To be fair, the Ruthvens (and later, Count Dracula) are both stellar examples of a Byronic villain.
Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, who one minor female character even nicknames "Lord Ruthven" in reference to his pallor and mannerisms.
Dom Claude Frollo from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a villainous example of the Byronic hero. A compassionate, fatherly person for most of his life, by the time the novel begins, he, while still brilliant, is isolated by his alchemical studies and ultimately doomed by his lust for Esmerelda.
Villain Protagonist Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is another example of Byronic Hero. Admired by millions of people throughout the world, even though he is quite clearly a very evil man.
Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights as a deconstruction of the Gothic genre and of Byronic heroes; actually averted because Heathcliff is genuinely dangerous to those around him and not just misunderstood by society.
The Monster (or the Creature, as he is more often called in the novel) also qualifies. He is incredibly eloquent, brilliant, and even persuasive in his best moments. He is also filled with characteristically Byronic anguish and despair due to being cut off from humanity as a result of his unnatural birth (or creation, depending on how you look at it). Not to mention that some literary critics have interpreted the Creature as Victor's dark side.
Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of literature is that, while the Public Domain Character Don Juan is usually written as a selfish, haughty, shameless womanizer and fits this trope to a tee, Lord Byron's own version of the character doesn't. The eponymous hero of Byron's epic, Don Juan, is not at all villainous or malicious, but easily manipulated and misunderstood.
The title character of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin can be both seen as an example, a parody, and a deconstruction. On one hand, he fits the mold in his cynical, self-destructive nature, he has more than a little of the Upper Class Twit in him, and is kind of ineffectual compared to similar characters. Lampshaded when Tatiana, Eugene's love interest, visits his library, understands that he has been invoking Romantic tropes when dealing with her, and asks herself: "Isn't he a parody?"
Grigoriy Aleksandrovich Pechorin in Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time is both a good example and possibly a deconstruction, being very Genre Savvy and all the more miserable for it. Also, he's not even the protagonist as such and dies "off-screen". The author apparently intended to stretch the idea of the Byronic Hero to its limits:
"You will again tell me that a human being cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why wouldn't believe that there was a Pechorin?".
In the Horatio Hornblower series, the title character is an honorable, dutiful, and humble man who acts with great courage under fire. However, he's also a brooding, melancholic mess whose humility verges on self-loathing, often shocked that people might care about him. Underneath his stoic facade is a world-class worry wort, and his courage under fire (in spite of his fears) is matched only by his cowardice in matters of the heart. He's also tone-deaf and never gets over his seasickness, much to his humiliation.
His older brother Jaime has elements of this as well.
Raistlin Majere of the Dragonlance books fits this trope perfectly. He's arrogant, ruthless, cynical, emotionally troubled, and ultimately evil. He's also highly intelligent, strong-willed, and capable of extraordinary bravery.
Gully Foyle in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, a The Count of Monte Cristoset in a future where people can teleport, starts out as this: he lives entirely to take revenge on the ship that declined to rescue him from his own crippled spacecraft (not the crew, mind you, just the ship; he's not that bright) and stops at nothing to do so, including raping perhaps the one completely likable character in the whole book. However, he gradually becomes more of a traditional hero and even a messiah of sorts.
Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Jonathan Strange ends up as one for a while, although he did have a heroic motive. It was lampshaded with Strange explaining that he picked up some of Lord Byron's style from hanging out with him.
Peter David's Sir Apropos Of Nothing, who only became a squire because he would be killed otherwise. He loathes long tales of heroic derring-do, and even became a full-fledged villain for a while.
Also, depending on your interpretation, the protagonist in Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick.
Irial, although he definitely has redeeming qualities: selflessness and his love for Niall being the most prominent.
C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith is an Anti-Hero, but his sidekick Yarol is definitely Byronic. Unlike the ruggedly handsome Smith, Yarol is androgynously, uncannily beautiful, and feminine beauty in its extreme is explicitly stated to denote evil in the universe of the stories. While the reader never learns the details of Yarol's villainy, he willingly participates in human trafficking merely to pay for his space booze.
At one point, Yarol's humanity is stripped away and he is transformed into a predatory beast-echo. When he is returned to his orignal state, it is surprisingly easy and the whole processs seems to tax Yarol very little. Smith realizes that this is because Yarol had very little humanity to begin with.
White Fang features the eponymous wolfdog as an animal equivalent.
In The Secret History, there's Henry Winter, college student, Renaissance Man, and Chessmaster extraordinaire. By the end of the book, he has organized and carried out an ancient Greek Dionysian ritual, killed one man by accident and one on purpose, successfully kept himself and his friends from being arrested, and says that he is finally happy because he can "live without thinking". Most of the school dislikes or hates him, his few friends admire him, and one falls in love with him. He likes dead languages and growing roses. He also kills himself, and the fallout of his various plots arguably ruins his friends' lives.
Harry Dresden is an interesting subversion of this, in that the books suggest that much of the magical community sees him as this - at least, the ones who don't know him well personally. Of course, the fact that the books are in first-person, and therefore we get to see his (often hilarious and self-depricating) inner monologue, tends to take away the 'dark and mysterious' image. That, and his penchant for cracking wise at all of the wrong moments.
Dean Priest of the Emily of New Moon series embodies a number of these character traits. He's well-educated and charismatic, but his disabilities have also made him cynical and bitter, as well as rather self-destructive. He travels often, which makes him a bit of a self-imposed exile. He is a loner. He is self-interested to a degree, but can also be selfless when he wants to be. LM Montgomery also gives him lots of Mr Rochester parallels, who is himself a Byronic Hero.
Tyrone Slothrop from Gravity's Rainbow qualifies. Actually, many of Pynchon's protagonists qualify, come to think of that.
For a good period of time during the later seasons of Angel, Wesley Wyndam-Price fills the role of the Byronic Hero as a cynical, self-destructive drunkard with a troubled past and horrible crime behind him and only a vast intellect to sustain him.
The title character also fits the trope quite well.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor qualifies, for his collateral damage count, including the genocide in the Time War to save the universe. However, this is very dependent on the episode and era.
Shane McCutcheon of The L Word is a rare and well-done female version.
Commander Shran of Star Trek: Enterprise. In fact, ALL Andorians are walking Romanticism incarnate, praising emotion and the experience of passion, ritualizing the concept of a "duel" to settle differences, housing probably the greatest Art Academy in the United Federation of Planets, and thoroughly disagreeing with Vulcans (Realists and Rationalists).
Adam Monroe is the Heroes character most likely to fit this trope. The show's token immortal, he helped save Japan from the feudal warlord Whitebeard four hundred years ago, founded the Company to make a better world for evolved humans, and, in the show's second season, plotted to give his people a second chance through the release of a supervirus. He's cultured, cunning, and a man of many vices.
Noah Bennet (HRG) is probably a better fit here. Sure, he's devoted to finding people with abilities to keep them safe (at times, anyway), but he's also partially responsible for Sylar's murdering spree. Not to mention his tendencies to operate in a morally gray fashion at times (particularly while working with The Company).
Harlan Judd (Tim Daly) of Eyes may or may not fit this perfectly. Though every episode of the show ended with the MacGuffin back in the hands of its rightful owner and somebody justly facing prison time or worse, Judd's interest is typically only in the former; he frequently admits that he doesn't really care if the kidnapper or thief get caught (unless they piss him off, which they almost invariably do). Daly described the character as "accidentally ethical".
Doctor Lightman from Lie to Me is sometimes unusually morally driven to help others to the point of putting himself in danger, but usually is a cocky, often cruel bastard who thinks he is always right. He'll also put others in harm's way if need be, but the end result is usually for the better good. Also, don't date his daughter.
Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries, whilst being the primary antagonist.
Londo Mollari from Babylon 5 is an old, bitter, and cynical republican who dreams of days of bygone glories, and is willing to undergo a Deal with the Devil to see his ideals come to fruition. He spends most of the show's run highlighting and showcasing the darker sides of both the overhanging conflict and Babylon Five itself, and while he is almost as important to the story as Sheridan, Londo's part of it is decisively darker and is won with backstabbing and intrigue. In the end, Londo ends up more of a Tragic Hero when he is forced to pay the piper for his past misdeeds.
Edmund Blackadder in his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th incarnations. He might disagree though, as he once described a Byronic hero as someone who goes around Italy in a big shirt, getting laid.
Several of the protagonists of The Wire, most obviously, Jimmy McNulty, who is immensely self-destructive and arrogant, though good-hearted. His fifth season story arc especially shows his Byronic side. Other characters, such as Omar, Michael Lee, Slim Charles, and Nicky Sobotka, have their Byronic qualities as well.
Although most of Shakespeare's characters are Tragic Heroes, a couple of his characters also qualify for Byronic Hero, such as Macbeth and Hamlet (who is a very borderline example). Bear in mind that Shakespeare's plays were written before Paradise Lost, and long before the days of Lord Byron.
Video Games
Solid Snake in the Metal Gear series and Gabriel Belmont in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow would make good buddies, as they are both Byronic Heroes: they are both willing to commit countless murders in order to achieve their goals - primarily concerned with their own interests rather than the greater good, even though they both have inherent good in them, and do commit themselves to achieving the greater good.
Sol Badguy from the Guilty Gear series is often boorish, slovenly, aloof, ill-mannered, far more intelligent and well-informed than his appearance would indicate, and is the perpetrator of one of the most awful crimes in that world: being the co-creator of the Gears. He might be a loose fit (perhaps more fitting as an Anti-Hero) due to his gruff concern for Dizzy, his (albeit rather violent) almost-brotherly relationship with Ky Kiske, and his deceptively high sense of self-sacrifice (in D&D parlance, he's very much Chaotic, but also most likely Good).
Ragna The Bloodedge continues this trend in BlazBlue. His down-to-earth nature, snarking, and Surrounded by Idiots attitude ("Why do I always seem to attract the A to Z of mental illness?!") obscures the fact that he has murdered hundreds of thousands of NOL personnel on his path of vengeance against Terumi.
Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes seems to fit this trope quite nicely, being a Heroic Sociopath with more character flaws than an average politician.
In the sequel, he steadily develops into a more and more sympathetic character, since he is becoming increasingly uneasy with the assasination game. In the end, he even vows to bring down the UAA permanently for all the lives they have destroyed and ruined.
Wylfred from Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is essentially a petty, grudge-seeking man who blames the death of his sister and his mother's insanity on the fact that his dad was taken by the Valkyrie. He then goes on a plot to kill the Valkyrie.
For two games, one of which he spends aimlessly following the people who revived him. Though his current detached and distant personality doesn't wander far from this trope.
Magus, or Prince Janus of Zeal, from Chrono Trigger. To elaborate: he unites the demi-humans of Zenan so they can fight the humans of Guardia, resulting in the most violent recorded conflict in that world's history. Most people consider him an antichrist figure, and the victory of the humans is celebrated centuries after the conflict ended. But Magus' real reason for being the Fiendlord is that he needs the resource to build a portal that would forcefully summon Lavos...so that he can personally destroy the thing that had taken everything from him: his kingdom, his mother, his big sister. It just happens that destroying Lavos will also save the world.
Anders in Dragon Age 2. By Act III of the storyline, Anders has become bitterly opposed to anyone who opposes freedom of mages, and even becomes a hypocrite if Fenris was enslaved again, as he approves of such actions, topping it all with the destruction of the Chantry and starting a war between mages and templars.
Atton Rand from Star WarsKnights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords - a cocky outcast and smooth talker found on a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere by The Exile, his foolishness is a facade for deceptive cunning, and his background is shrouded in mystery. Turns out, he was a force-sensitive Sith Assassin under Revan's command who killed and tortured Jedi.And don't read his thoughts; provided you can get through the Psychic Static.
Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance, while normally just a Heroic Sociopath, becomes increasingly Byronic during "Holiday Wars" and "Oceans Unmoving". The only part of the Byronic template that he doesn't fit is the brooding part. If Bun-Bun ever gets in a brooding mood, he just beats someone up instead.
Vaarsuvius from The Order of the Stick. S/he is an arrogant, condescendingElf Wizard with a taste for ultimate arcane knowledge and power, and is very long-windedand verbose in hir speech. S/he is not without a soft spot for hir teammates, though, and is dedicated to stopping the forces of evil. As for a Dark and Troubled Past? Well, s/he made a deal with some fiends to gain ultimate arcane power to save hir family from a vengeful black dragon, which lead to hir mate's divorce and hir committing one of the greatest evil acts in recent history in the genocide of 1/4 of the black dragon population. S/he then went on to battle Xykon, but lost due to hir hubris, managing to narrowly avoid death at his skeletal hands. The reason why s/he accepted the deal with the fiends? Because s/he was too proud to accept that hir magic was weak, although Vaarsuvius is learning from hir mistakes.
Also, Redcloak, who is leading a Rage Against the Heavens plot to bring equality to the Goblin people, as well as being an Übermensch who follows his own moral code, and is highly intelligent and witty.
Byron the Berserker from Guilded Age matches this trope nicely; and his name is evidently chosen for this reason. (His avatar's player references the actual Lord Byron.)
Web Original
In the Whateley Universe, Brigand is a classic Byronic Hero, complete with a tragic backstory that he attempts to avenge, despite the way this distances him from society's laws. However, in a superhero world, this makes you a supervillain.
Agent Washington in Red vs. Blue. Cynical, bitter, charismatic, tragic backstory, and relentlessly dedicated to getting retribution for the terrible things that have happened to him.
Lord Byron himself, of course. He was surrounded by scandal in his own lifetime - womanising, possibly man-ising as well, and rumours of incest with his half-sister to boot.
Lord Byron was also something of an admirer of the deposed Napoleon Bonaparte, considering him to be the epitome of a Romantic hero*
which is what Byron considered this very trope
—a persecuted, flawed, and ultimately lonely genius.
A whole lot of Russian writers were pretty much Byron fanboys, and gravitated towards this to some extent or another, both in real life and in writing. Griboyedov, Lermontov, and some others come to mind, as well as simple socialites such as Tolstoy-Amerikanets.
Janis Joplin. A hard drinking, hard living, self-destructive woman with a voice that could melt your heart.
Jim Morrison, the iconic, leather-clad poet and baritone singer whose short life was riddled with controversy, and whose self-destructive lifestyle lead to his death at a young age.
Ozzy Osbourne, another singer with a controversial lifestyle troubling him personally, but nevertheless shows genuine awareness to the rotten world through his voice.
