I think Ernestine might be a little piqued to hear you say she’s “neutral” in any way.
One RingyDingy
I’m a little surprised that you’re asking me to prove something that seems to me uncontroversial. As I opined upthread, there are more British acts who sing in an American-ish accent than those who don’t. But since you asked, here a couple of totally random examples:
Coldplay - nice public school lads from the South, where we pronounce “can’t” like “cahn’t”. And yet in their song “Clocks” the first line is “Lights go out and I can’t be saved”, and “can’t” is prounounced so that it rhymes with “pant”.
Same word, in a song by another well-spoken southern band, Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien”, same non-native pronunciation in the line “I live in a town Where you can’t smell a thing”. And Radiohead probably sound more English than average.
I could go on… I dunno, Jamiroquai, Elton John, can you really say that they sing in an English accent?
My first reply was explaining the difference between singing and spoken accents. Observing that they don’t sing with the same accent as with which they speak is no different to what I’m saying. The disagreement is whether it’s accurate to describe the sound as ‘American’.
For every example of an ‘American’ sound in a particular word, there’s a British one to counter it. Elton John’s “vodka’r’and tonic” was one I’d never noticed until it was pointed out in another thread here a while back.
What the two cases of ‘cahn’t’ (both on a rhythmic stress, not inconsequential to pronunciation) show is two British singers using a vocal sound which corresponds to that used by American singers. It doesn’t show that either singer is using an unnatural American accent. This fits right in with my original statement, does it not?
(And as for making me go and listen to Coldplay, fuck you 
)
But Americans don’t have this debate about how come American singers sound slightly British sometimes. There is a clear bias in the direction of American accents. Even in that Elton John example, it’s not “vodka’r’and tonic”, it’s more like “vahdkahr and tahnic”, an approximation of how an American would pronounce it, although you are right that Mr John does handle terminating R’s in a very English style.
Also, what about other styles of English music? Folk music, for example. They sound 100% English, not American. I don’t see how the physical act of singing makes one favour particular vowel sounds.
HUH? Read the OP, maybe, and you’ll remember why Reply #1 talked about this in the first place?
The physical act of singing in particular circumstances (particularly into microphones and above amplified instruments) has a huge effect. Folk singers do not develop a style specifically for this situation.
I don’t see anything there about American singers trying to sound British. I see talk of Brits singing “without an accent” (i.e. sounding American).
I deliberately chose something that had an unambiguous British vs. American comparison, and that absolutely anybody would know. I knew some people might get snobbish about it, but fuck them :p.
Strange. I completely misread the OP and only just now noticed.
But I still stand by what I’ve said!
…and you made a selection of something which would not sound too jarring to neither British or American ears, and therefore fits into my hypothesis nicely? 
Heh.
" We are Omnipeetint. That’s Potent with an Omni in front of it. " Priceless.
Actually, this isn’t always so. Awhile back there was a thread about why Billy Joe whatever his name is from Green Day affects a very slightly British accent when singing, something I had noticed too. Do British people even hear that, or do you have to be American to notice that he’s affecting a bit of an accent?
I used to think I was good at accents and impersonations but for the past 10 years or so I don’t really think I can do it anymore. Maybe I never could but I never had anyone tell me that they were wrong, except in an acting class my French accent was called farcical but since I was playing a French Maid in a Moliere play it was not intended to be serious.
In recent years my hearing seems to be off and I can’t get accents right, except a slight Southern accent. I tend to absorb this accent by osmosis, if I am around people speaking with the accent I end up using it without even realizing it. This got me in trouble a few times with an acting teacher who thought I was mocking her. Northerners might think I have the accent all the time but I don’t think I do except for saying “y’all” a lot.
I once did a play where I had to play various characters, one with a Dr. Ruth type German accent, another French accent and a Southern accent. During practices I’d get flustered and mix up the accents so I’d be speaking with a Southern French German accent. It was amusing.
Anyway, my accents seemed to be fine for college plays and community theatre, maybe I could have been better with proper training then but I doubt I’d have been getting rave reviews for them in Variety or on the SDMB (those guys are harsh). I don’t think I could do it now though even with proper training.
In response to the idea which has arisen that at least some Americans affect a British accent of some sort while singing, I believe there are a fair number of Americans with normally rhotic speech who sing non-rhotically (though generally without such features as “intrusive r”). I can also easily imagine that features like alveolar flapping and Canadian raising are suppressed or reduced in the environment of singing, whether by training or altered stress patterns or whatever. Perhaps these are the sort of things that get perceived as movement towards a British accent.
One other interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that many Americans who would never rhyme the word “again” with a word like “pain” in their normal speech nonetheless pen lyrics which rhyme “again” with a word from the “pain” class. And yet, true to their roots, they sing them as non-rhyming. I find this fascinating.
“Harsh” is so harsh. We Dopers prefer to be known as “selective”.
Dialect to my mind is about word choice, and accent is about word pronunciation.
Ever heard "Grazed Knees " by Snow Patrol?
Gary Lightbody rhymes “stare” with “there” but they sound like “stur” and “thur”…clearly Northern Irish.
In this interview the word choices clearly mark them out as Irish or British, but not necessarily Northern Irish.
e.g.
“get hammered”
“knocking the year on the head”
“go on the piss”
“getting mashed”
“all our pals”
“chipper”
“a bunch of lads”
“shite”
Generally it is hard to do an accent well enough to fool people. Personally I think Irish accents are particularly difficult, especially for most Americans who try a “they’re after my Lucky Charms” number which, even in the original, sounds like no genuine Irish accent ever spoken.
Lightbody has a curious Norn Iron/Midatlantic hybrid style of singing. I’ve always thought that Norn accents were particularly suited to rock ‘n’ roll. Van Morrison, The Undertones and a few others sound Northern Irish but rock ‘n’ rolly too in certain songs.
Van the Man.
We stole him.
Sorry. 
Peace,
mangeorge