Trashley's Valentines! Robbie Williams!

My love of Robbie Williams is not about his looks. It's not about his music, either. It's about his tenacity, and his single minded pursuit of a dream: America.

If he's known to Americans at all, it's a casual acquaintance. Oh, he's that former boybander who wrote the Jessica Simpson song. He made that weird video where he rips off his skin. He's yet another celebrity to battle with addictions in and out of the public eye. (In fact, he just went back to rehab - on his 33rd birthday.)

Robbie Williams is more popular in parts of Europe than I care to acknowledge, but his acute awareness that the United States just doesn't give a fuck has pushed him to try to break over in the States for damn near ten years. Ten years.

You'd think he'd have learned by now that we don't take to kindly to Europop over here, no matter how mainstream the music actually is. Americans currently want their British music to come over in ballads (Coldplay, James Blunt), rock (Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys) or NOT AT ALL. But Robbie won't have it. He's going to coke himself up for the next 20 years because he just wants us to listen, and I think it's time we finally gave him a chance.