George Michael and U2's Bono say British pop music is dominated by too many bubblegum bands and "pretty young things".
They say that's why Britain, which once ruled the world's pop charts in the heyday of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, is now just an also-ran in international music.
Bono, leader of Irish group U2, said: "People are sick to the teeth of processed and hyped pop bands. They want something real again."
"The state of music in Britain and Ireland hasn't been very healthy recently," he told London's Sun.
Radiohead has just become the first UK group to top US charts since Prodigy in 1997.
Back in 1986, British music accounted for 32 per cent of record sales in the United States. The percentage has now dropped to 0.2 per cent.
George Michael blamed the British music industry's obsession with "pretty young things" for the poor quality of British music and sales.
"The corporate guys have spent the past 15 years doing their best to relieve artists of their art and they have pretty much succeeded," he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Michael hopes to find inspiration from a great of the '60s - he paid $2 million for the Steinway piano John Lennon used to compose his famed peace anthem "Imagine".
Michael will use the piano on his next album then display it at the Beatles museum in Liverpool.
"I know when my fingers touch the keys of the Steinway I will feel truly blessed," he said.
For him, the piano symbolises a peak in pop culture when "people expressed a naive but genuine belief that they could change the world with music and conviction."
"These people wrote their own songs, sang them with a variety of untrained voices, drank, took drugs, drowned, marched, looked ridiculous and made amazing, beautiful music."