A great example of a singer who doesn’t drop his Rs off is the lead singer for REO Speedwagon (Kevin Cronin?). Keep On Loving You is the best example I can think of, and since I was a kid I always wondered why he was over-emphasizing his Rs, even though he’s really not, he’s just pronouncing them when most singers I was hearing didn’t.
Agree strongly with the bolded. I don’t agree with throwing a blanket over so many pop/rock and declaring that they all sing with the same accent.
Even among top-selling American pop/rock artists – not niche artists – there is much more variation than commonality IMHO. Texan Don Henley does not have the same accent as Michigander Glenn Frey when singing. Floridian Tom Petty and Delawarean George Thorogood do not sing in a “standard” midwestern American accent. Neither did Buddy Holly (Texas panhandle) or Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites (Athens, GA).
This is all very true. I think that there are so many fallacious assumptions in the OP’s argument that it’s difficult to address every single one of them at the same time. In addressing Fallacious Assumption X or Fallacious Conclusion Y, we’re having to gloss over Fallacious Assumptions A, B, and C.
At the very least these are true –
- There isn’t really a Standard American English accent.
- There isn’t really a universal “singing in English” accent.
- To the extent that you can come up with some kind of dominant SAE accent or dominant “singing in English” accent, they’re not the same accent.
But other than that, she totally nailed it, right?
Exactly.
Totally.
Well, except for the part about SAE (however we define it) being “bland” and featureless. That’s also completely wrong. It almost falls into the category of “not even wrong, just nonsensical”.
But beyond that, yep, I think she’s got it.
“…for-evah!”. Isn’t that Lennon doing New York Jewish? Oh, wait…he didn’t move to the Upper West Side until a few years after this song…
He’s from Chicago, and his accent is very reflective of that…we pronounce our Rs very distinctly. 
I think Paul McCartney started sounding more English (while singing) as he became older…his accent is much more noticeable now than it was in those early days when they were more heavily influenced by American Rock & Roll.
True. Even in his earlier songs less influenced by US artists, like Eleanor Rigby, he sounds a bit more English than in, say, Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey.
I’m going to be honest, I’ve never heard the American accent that the Beatles supposedly sang in. It’s always sounded like a Scouse accent to me. What songs do people have in mind when they say they sang like Americans?
Oh, yes, good point…his accent is quite distinct in Eleanor Rigby and other songs from that era (Penny Lane, for instance, which was mentioned upthread).
Keeping in mind the caveats others have mentioned in this thread (there’s more than one “American accent”, Americans may tend to hear the “accent” we’re talking about as American more than some others might, etc., etc.), the answer is: “by common consent, around 80% of their songs – maybe 95% of their songs up to about 1965, perhaps 60% of the songs after 1965”.
They were asked about this at various press conferences early in their career (1963 and 1964), both in England and in the US.
Most Americans found their speaking voices to sound much more British (and, yes, Liverpudlian) than their singing voices. As I mentioned before, this was due mainly to their love of Elvis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, etc., artists whose styles served as models of sorts, especially in those earlier albums.
You might have a more sensitive ear to subtler, semi-Americanized versions of a Scouse accent, but many people don’t detect clear-cut, definitive British accents in most British rock music, let alone regional British accents – though there are, as others have mentioned, many, many exceptions (Elvis Costello, the Jam, much of the Kinks…)
Even the early Beatles couldn’t help but change their “uh’s” (as in “cut”) to "u’s (as in “put”) when singing, a clearly Scouse trait, as well parodied by Neil Innes in the Rutles compositions “Love Life” (prounounced Luve Life) and “I Must Be in Love” (I Muste Be In Luve). Perhaps it’s this one vowel that you pick up on in Beatles songs, and allows you to identify them as Liverpudlians more readily than most listeners do.
One other question: do people with very strong/thick kinds of accents ever find SAE or Received pronounciation unintelligible or in any way a strain to understand?
Not as a general rule, no. We do easily identify a speaker of SAE as American, though. Of course, we’re exposed to SAE on a fairly regular basis through the media.
When I hear people sing, even people who speak with an SAE accent, I don’t hear them sounding like someone speaking SAE. I hear them sounding like they’re singing. Just because singing voices sound normal to me, and spoken SAE sounds normal to me, doesn’t mean that they sound the same.
I have a southern English accent and even I can find pure RP occasionally hard to understand, if I’m thinking of the right thing - it’s the accent the old BBC newsreaders used to have, that very rich aristocratic type of English, isn’t it? How the Queen used to talk in her first few Queen’s speeches? Yeah, can be hard to understand - like any strong accent. Just because it’s one that’s been standardised (often, if not always, for socio-political reasons - I don’t think you usually find that the accent that becomes dominant in a country is one associated with poor regions or lower social classes, for instance) doesn’t make an accent any less strong to those who don’t share it. There is no such thing as an inherently neutral accent.
I’m actually struggling to think of the masses of bands from outisde the US that apparently sing in an American accent. I can think of many bands putting on an accent, from Zep to the Jesus and Mary Chain, but those that lessen their accent and end up sounding American? I can’t think of any.
Simple answer: Yes.
But, what do you mean by “very strong/thick kinds of accents”?
It seems to me that you mean accents that you have difficulty understanding, and you think that the difficulty goes only in one direction.
After reading the posts in this thread, do you still think that there’s a form of American English that is “neutral”?
Also, I’m wondering: How many languages can you speak?
Of course they do. I have done consulting in Australia and have been asked to repeat myself or slow down.
I guess I’m surprised to be in the minority here. I suppose I did live in the US for three years - maybe that makes a difference.