Pop! goes my heart.

I have a confession to make. I adore Hugh Grant, I really do. So does my mother, which is entirely irrelevant but random enough a fact that it makes my way of writing seem intriguing and perhaps even interesting.

Today, when I was supposed to be reading Books, important books about language and other Important Things, I chose to let the light of the computer screen turn my brain into mush and spent an hour and some watching the new-ish, disgustingly sugary film called Music And Lyrics.

There isn't much to say about the actual film, it was junk and probably the worst film Hugh Grant has ever starred in and I'd be ashamed to admit I like the man if it wasn't for the impeccably sweet Notting Hill that my mother and I watch together when we are feeling unusually sappy and delirious.

It's not the film I want to write about, though, for heaven's sake no. It's the music. The absolute simplicity of those few songs that I might now take the liberty of calling good pop music.

See there's good pop, and there's bad pop. In my ears Justin Timberlake, occasionally Christina Aguilera (when she doesn't get too dramatic with those godawful ballads), some Britney Spears songs (Toxic, anyone?), Wham!, Will Young, Girls Aloud, to mention a few, they all make (or made) and perform honest, simple pop music that makes me feel like the world doesn't have to be such a serious place all the time. I listen to them and I don't get anxious over the war over there or them killing each other over there or our planet being tortured over there. No, I listen to them and I forget all those things for a second.

Bad pop music, though, is something that should be declared illegal in the whole of universe. I won't even go there because the mere thought of Pussycat Dolls or the like makes me feel physically ill and I might have to stop writing in order to run to the bathroom and retch until my throat burns and I am banging the floor with my fists, cursing whoever made bootyshaking a popular sports activity amongst the youth of today.

Back to the film, then. It started with the music video of a fictional 80's boyband POP, in which Hugh Grant was the keyboard player and second frontman of the two and now, two hours after finishing the film, I have still got that song, Pop! goes my heart, stuck in my head. It is 80's, it is ridiculous, and incredibly addictive. I am insanely in love. And you should be too.