Me too. Certainly more American than Mancunian, at any rate (what ‘Manchester punk’ sound are they supposedly imitating?)
I always hated Avril Lavines Sk8r Boi (man, it hurt to type that), especially for her line at the end about the guy that she turned dayyeeeoownnn-ah. Christ, thats bad.
But top of the bad pronunciation pops are the Pussyflap dolls, no question.
Amma sick wichooo…
You know how t’preciate me…
Everythin’s the same since I b’in the seve’th grade…
Do’cha wish’r girlfr’n was hot like me…
English, girls. We understand english.
It’s funnt this should come up; we were just discussing this the other day.
The guy from Green Day isn’t singing with any American accent I’ve ever heard. We couldn’t place it, but it’s weird. Maybe it’s some affected thing, but it’s not American; there are some bizarre vowels in there.
I’ve heard that accent from Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, both originally from Mississippi. Fogerty might be imitating Muddy, lots of people do. 
The Beach Boys claimed to surf at a place called Waimea Bay.
Only they pronounce it as if it were an english word why-a-ME-ya instead of its Hawaiian pronunciation Why-may-ah.
Not particulary irritating but amusing in that had they ever been there they would almost certainly know how to pronounce it.
Billie Joe is from California (Anaheim?). And to this born and raised Kentuckian, he sounds like other Californians I’ve heard. YMMV, etc.
I’ve heard a few Californians, but they sounded pretty normal to me. I have no idea what you’d call the accent he’s faking, but it’s always sounded like a kind of punk pastiche to me.
Tori, by the way, apparently cops her odd pronunciations from Kate Bush. I’m a big Tori fan and I still find myself wishing she’d tone it down. It’s more obvious in her live performances.
Not to mention the way they lifted the catch phrase from the title track of Sir Mix-a-lot’s 1988 debut album, “Swass”:
“Don’t you wish your boyfriend was swass like me?”
Sung with the same rhythm and nearly the same tune. The first time I heard “Don’t Cha”, I immediately thought tomyself, “I hope Mix is getting some fat royalty checks for this …”
Avril’s pronunciation is really unbearable. How you manage to rhyme “unannounced” with “something else” and stretch “you” into a 16-syllable word are beyond me. (And the stress in “frustrated” should not be on the second syllable! It just shouldn’t!!)
Tori’s already been covered, so I’ll go ahead and throw in Bjork. Can’t listen. Pronunciation hurts my ears.
Dionne Warwick.
God don’t make little green apples,
and it don’t rain in Indianapples
in the summertime
:rolleyes:
And yet as bad as that was, I heard some hideously awful ez-muzak cover band mangle it worse with a semi-reggae beat and
God don’t make liddle green apples aaa-nd
it don’t rain in Indie Anna Pole Iss
in the summertime
:smack:
Louis Armstrong himself talked (and sang!) that way, as you can hear on his 1932 recording Lawd, You Made The Night Too Long.
You made the mountains high, the oith, the sky,
So who am I to say you’re wrong…
Everything ever sung by Anthony Newley.
Can there be any doubt?
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned before.
It’s that “Goodnight Song” from “The Sound of Music”, as rendered in the 1964 film. Specifically, it’s the line:
“Adieu, adieu
to yieu, and yieu, and yieu…”
It’s supposed to be “to you, and you, and you…” of course, but that had to get it to rhyme. It drives me nuts every time I hear it. I’m convinced it’s the reason that the “Sound of Music Sing Alongs” have become so popular – it’s not because everyone wants to sing with Julie Andrews – they just want to exorcise that awful line.
I think that’s an important point. Billie Joe always sounded to me like an American kid who grew up listening and singing English punk bands and it altered his delivery quite a bit.
Joey Ramone seemed to pronounce things funny all the time in Ramones songs. Some of if was just NY accent stuff, but some of it, I don’t know where it came from…one example would be in Glad To See You Go:
And in a moment of passion
Get the glory like Charles Manson
He pronounces passion pahshoon.
When Michael Stipe was in his mumbling phase, he seemed to pronounce a lot of words funny, though damn if I know what he was singing anyway.
In the very early ABBA song “Me and Bobby and Bobby’s Brother” they sing
Climb-ing the apple tree.
Yes, they prounce it CLIMB-ing. Since there are no errors in pronounciation on the rest of the record, I’m not buying it was a Swedish-to-English mistake.
There was some song I used to hear on the Muzak at work that always caused me to grind my teeth to powder. The only phrase of it I remember is “in the harbor of each other’s arms”. Whoever sang it always pronounced harbor as “har-BERR”.
I’m from Brooklyn and when I got into my first New Orleans cab a few years ago, I thought my driver sounded like he grew up on Avenue U, and never lost his accent.
According to this link, the song “Don’t Cha” is originally sung by Tori Alamaze, and was covered by the Pussycat Dolls after Alamaze was dropped from the record label and the song’s writer Cee-Lo was looking for a hit to help in restyling PCD as a pop group instead of a dance group. They don’t mention “Swass” at all, but of course it could have been an inspiration for Alamaze as well.