There are exceptions, I have said that.  As a whole though most dont have an accent

I remember how confused I was when my dad told me The Scorpions didn't speak English at all. It rocked me like a hurricane.

The singer from Green Day does this sometimes.  It irritates me.  Even though I don't like Green Day, it still makes me think "stop trying to sound like Johnny Rotten you pretentious little prick!".

What about those Alaskan Bush People family and their fucked up accents?

Billy Bragg sings with a heavy Brit accent.

Watching the Merseyside Darby so this is appropriate


Gerry and the Pacemakers, Liverpool






Please compare the Gerry Marsden to Elvis




Or better still, skip Elvis, it's Derby Day.

Current band. Ish

Do these guys sound American to you guys? Genuine question.




Apply to women too.?

I started a thread about them about 9 months ago.  It had some of  the funniest comments in it that I have read in GD in years

Adele (sp?) sounds American when she sings but has the most obnoxious English accent.

The first video: NO
The second video: YES

See that's what im talking about.  I had no idea she was a Brit till you posted that

Amy Winehouse is another example.

An interesting song for this thread is one of my favourites - Golden Brown by the Stranglers. If you pay attention, you'll notice that while they maintain a fairly clean English accent through most of the song, there is a tiny variation in accent across some of the words, to facilitate a portamento that would be more awkward with harder consonents.

AND, why our horse racing tracks run in the opposite direction as well.

And I completely forgot about this, but the Kinks also wrote an excellent candidate for the official Arfcom anthem

When the Stones were just getting started, the BBC did not want to play their music.
Jaggers accent led BBC listeners -and-or staff to believe it was an American Negro band

Damn Brits don't have accents but country singers do. Go figure.

Sure about that? They, along with other people, had specific songs banned based on BBC policies relating to obscenity. Absolutely nothing to do with any perceived race of the singer



 

Subnet, you and me are going to have a falling out



THIS is surely the version you meant to post.

No, I really did mean to post Slim Dusty. I've always loved the guy.

But The Dubliners are awesome, of course.

All,these accent patterns can be explained in a course on the histiry of the English language .... it ain't a STEM course but it is interesting

Do these guys sound Canadian?

When I was a kid there is 50/50 chance that could surprise me that they were Brits.  Today as listening to it after a Brit posted it not so much.  

I dont know what it is or why I cant put my finger on it.  It really is a weird thing

Irish pub songs border on what Swingset touched upon with the Country music accent.  I dont wanna derail my own thread with faking an accent(Which both the Irish and Country singers do)  This is meant as an honest to God why do all(well almost all) English speakers sound like Americans when they sing thread question

I think in normal daily conversation, a stutter's timing and rhythm are off base, but when singing, it's a highly controlled melody/rhythm and not self generated.

I

I vote for this explanation. I can do a fairly decent London, Irish, Scotish, and Manchester accents (I watch a ton of BBC shows on Netflix/Hulu, ABC Australian shows too--but I have a hard time doing that one), and hard consonants are the hallmark of their annunciation. That's what makes British comedy so funny I think. They practice elocution to sound clear and use interesting pitches, whereas we just let the words roll out rather monotone. To sing, you must hold out notes in whatever tone the song requires, which removes much of the the choppiness and dialect.

Pronouncing R's (rhotic) is the main catch. Most UK English dialects are non-rhotic, or use rolled R's (L's) when speaking, but you don't hear this much when they sing. I think they do this on purpose often to appeal to the American music audience, which is certainly the largest in the world. But we also bend towards a British accent somewhat when singing, because we almost never sing "giving good loving", it's "givin good lovin".

It's not exactly a derailment, it ties back to the same idea. While English accents vary massively across even the space of a few miles, one of the commonalities that define a modern English accent (what is usually considered the English Accent is actually Received Pronounciation, while the actual "generic English" accent would be a downgraded RP but without hitting estuary English) is a greater clip on some letters, sometimes described as a "sharper", "cleaner", or "colder" sound. Also one of the reasons why English actors so often end up playing bad guys, as the accent sounds a little more controlled.



Except... that doesn't really work with many songs. Singers will generally sing the sound shape, which is usually closer to the American way of sounding out the phoneme (which, if memory serves, would make it an issue of allophonics as it's the variable delivery of the same phoneme that is at the heart of the question). The end result is that British singers tend to sound American - more so in some songs that others, as it is driven by the sound shape and the combination of sound shapes needed to support the melody.



When we look at certain other accents however (Irish is a good example, as is Welsh) we find that there is less of a deviation required to achieve this, making it easier for someone to sing with that accent.



Psychology also forms a large part of it, as do speech patterns. For many people, their spoken voice is very different to their written voice. For someone using RP, there should not be a significant divergence between the two. Thus, a song written outside of that paradigm would sound jarring as the two do not complement each other. A slight change in accent will resolve that.



What we need to do, to tie this into another thread, is convince Subnet to interview AgentFunky (ask him about the US winning WWII ), which would give you a good comparison of accents.



And just because this is turning into a YouTube thread, the following clip involves Catherine Tate reciting Shakespeare in a way that is probably much closer to the original than the modern Royal Shakespeare productions. Note that the vowels are much more elongated and rounded , while maintaining a clip on the consonants. Interesting to compare and contrast with Tenant's natural accent, which is also much "rounder".







 

And just in case someone is interested on taking a detour through differences between Shakespeare's English and classic RP English, the following video is fascinating.



Admittedly, this probably has quite a narrow range of appeal to GD

Andrew Lincoln has one of theworst fake southern accents I've ever heard, and the harder he tries to sound southern, the worse it gets.

Or even a more modern example like the Artic Monkeys

Because American is the perfect language.

And since they are trying to perfect their music, it just sounds like American.

Truth.

That was fascinating. Thank you for posting that.

That Shakespearean English, it almost sounds like Irish.

It's weird how some of them can turn it on or off as they want. Ever here the guy from house?

Don't encourage me. I think more schools should get Ben Crystal in to talk about Shakespeare, not just in terms of accent but he takes people on a rather wonderful exploration of the works.



I won't embed because it's a rather massive detour from the original post and it's 1h28min long, but I'd recommend it to anyone interested in exploring Shakespeare's language: http://youtu.be/9FF5K8VlcRI



 

Actually it's closer to a westcountry accent - in fact, if you hold the stereotypical "pirate" accent in mind when you listen, you'll notice the similarities.



 

West Country, is that like Wales? And yes it sounded just like a stereotypical "pirate" accent. Here where I live in the summer there is a Blackbeard Pirate festival.
Tons of people dressing up and talking like pirates and that is exactly what they sound like now that you mention it.

It depends on the genre. Rock musicians tend to reflect their region.
For example, the Eagles sing with a typical Californian accent:

For the songs you hear on the radio/tv they do. Because if they don't they, don't sell. Simple.
A better question is why do foreign singers have to sound like americans to get airtime. (with a few exceptions)

A few samples, of songs not sung in 'american'

Very interesting.  I told Ms BSSZ51 about me starting this thread. She's kinda a smarty pants with degrees and stuff.  She said you were pretty articulate after reading this post., So take that as a compliment  Most people think she is really bitchy  The video does kinda hit the topic hard in a round about way

Mrs. Brown, you have a lovely daughter...and I'm obviously British.

When you're alone you can always go....downtown. In London.


Whata YA meen YA can't here an accent?

That was SNL or Mad TV.

 

I seem to remember Elton John stating this during an interview...

Southerner also started after the Civil War. Before and during we all sounded the same.

 

I didn't know Scorpions were German until someone pointed it out to me.

We also didn't celebrate Christmas for a while because that was British.

 

That's normally a codeword for "using ten long words where three short ones would do" but I accept the compliment.