Boy George has high praise for Adele and Ed Sheeran

Adele and Ed Sheeran are the only pop stars making authentic music nowadays, according to Boy George.

The Culture Club star behind classic 1980s hits like Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want To Hurt Me is not impressed with the pop sounds he hears today, and he thinks it's unfortunate that fellow U.K. hitmakers Adele and Ed Sheeran are the "only real organic artists left" in the mainstream music industry.

Boy George, real name George O'Dowd, tells the Sydney Morning Herald: "Everything is quite formulaic now, it's almost like we all know the way it works. Back in the '70s we all believed there was a wizard behind the curtain.

"The bean-counters (accountants and businessmen) hadn't quite worked out what the formula was so artists were allowed to invent themselves, reinvent themselves, make it up as they went along. There were no hard-and-fast rules."

George is about to re-invent himself as 'Boy Business' after signing up as a contestant on the new season of U.S. reality show Celebrity Apprentice, which will feature Arnold Schwarzenegger as the boss.

The pop star quietly let it slip that he didn't make it to the live finals of the TV contest during a chat on Today earlier this week (beg23May16), and now he can only hope his stint on the show, following on from his judging role on Britain's The X Factor, doesn't turn him into a TV celebrity.

"I don't like being called a celebrity," he explains. "To be a celebrity you don't really necessarily have to do very much. You can be quite pretty, gobby or a car crash.

"To be an artist you have to have some ability and something to say. I'm not even making any judgment about those people because I like it, I enjoy it like everybody else does.

"But for me there is a definite, definite difference between David Bowie and Kim Kardashian. Let's just get that clear."