Kim Wilde: 5 Things To Know About The 80s Singer Who Insulted Ed Sheeran’s Looks

British singer Kim Wilde said Ed Sheeran wouldn’t have made it big in the ’80s because ‘he’s not a classic Hollywood-looking guy’. Here’s 5 things to know about her.

Singer Kim Wilde, who shot to fame in the 1980s, is back in the headlines following her remarks about Ed Sheeran‘s appearance. The 59-year-old said Ed wouldn’t have had what it takes to make it on the pop scene back in the ’80s because “he’s not a classic Hollywood-looking guy”. In an interview with Platinum Magazine, she said the 29-year-old “A Team” singer wasn’t “quite as easy on the eye as George Michael was.” Here’s 5 things to know about Kim.

1. Kim said the music industry has changed a lot over the past three decades. “There’s more celebration of diversity now, acceptance of differences,” she said in her interview with Platinum Magazine. “Look at Ed Sheeran, he’s not a classic Hollywood-looking guy, but no one cares. He’s not quite as easy on the eye as George Michael was, but so what?”. Ed Sheeran, a fellow British singer, is the UK’s richest musician under the age of 30, and has a reported wealth of more than 200 million pounds.

2. Kim said she believes aliens are real. In the same Platinum interview, the singer explained how her 2018 album Here Come the Aliens was inspired by seeing a UFO flying over her back garden. “The effect of seeing something unexplained in the sky is very powerful, whether it was from this earth or not, and I had the strange feeling it wasn’t, the sense I was witness to something extraordinary,” she said. “And a lot of people locally saw it too, so I knew I wasn’t going mad. I’ve met lots of people who’ve seen really strange things.”

3. She shot to fame with her debut single “Kids In America”. The popular song reached number two in the UK in 1983, and led to her winning the Brit Award for Best British Female solo artist. The single also cracked the top 5 in other countries around the world including Germany, France, and Australia.

4. She’s had 25 singles reach the Top 50. At the peak of her career, between 1981 and 1996, she had 25 singles reach the Top 50 of the UK singles chart including “Chequered Love”, “You Came” and “Never Trust a Stranger”. She has sold more than 10 million albums and 20 million singles, and holds the record as the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s.

5. Kim now has a second career as a gardener. Following her life as a pop star, Kim now lives in a 16th-century barn in Hertfordshire, and is enjoying a second wave of success in the world of gardening. She has even presented gardening shows on the BBC and Channel 4.