I’ve noticed this really strange accent creeping into British music. And it’s sort of from the same source - the young pop/folk revival.
Case 1: Ellie Goulding Guns and Horses (ignore the appalling video, it’s a really good song). Features: rhotic R, glottal-stopped trailing T (“you’re so worth it” => “you’re so woRth i’”; “I’d do i’ all foR you”), vowel sounds are all over the map: “all” => “oooorll”
Case 2: Mumford & Sons Little Lion Man. Rhotic R, very rounded vowels in some places “heaaaaaaRt”
Case 3: Eliza Doolittle Mr Medicine. “Mooooh doooohs will stooort to open, this cycooo has now been broken”. [Aside: Man she is SOOO cute.] ETA in her first hit ‘Pack up your troubles’, she pronounces “Google” as “Googoo”.
Years ago British singers kind of did a mid-Atlantic accent. However, the performers above have unmistakeably English accents, yet the singing accent is nothing like the way they speak. Anyone else noticed this? Any theories?
In the States, M&Sons is positioned as neo-Folk, alongside the Avett Brothers and a few other strummy Americana-with-a-banjo type bands - I just assumed that projecting a rougher accent was part of this wave’s “folkie cred” - interesting to hear a U.K.'er comment on it as well from your side-of-the-pond’s take on accents…
While she is notable for singing in an English accent, Lily Allen’s accent is a London one (aka ‘mockney’ as she’s actually from a wealthy family) rather than this weird thing I’m talking about.
Keeping in mind I know less than nothing about accents, the first and second singers sound to me like they’ve been heavily influenced by Regina Spektor, who was the first relatively well-known artist I’m aware of who extensively used that pixieish glottal stop style of singing. Although in her case, it’s at least partly due to her slight Russian accent. Spektor’s a major figure in the last half decade of indie folk (or rather, “anti-folk”), so it wouldn’t surprise me if her vocal style is in the process of becoming popularized now.
You raise an interesting point. Who came first - Spektor or The Moldy Peaches?
I’m wondering if another influence on the British singers, however, is the weird cod-West Country accent that traditional British folk singers use - see Frankie Armstrong (with whom I once shared a stage). Perhaps Mumford & Sons et al are doing a modern London version of a toned-down version of the “folk” accent.
The first song is truly awful, lots of auto-tune there, the glottal stop is often used to denote a ‘working class’ (blue collar) credentialising point, it is very much a pretense, any working class kid could see stright through it.I also don’t like the artificial tremelo introduced into her voice, I could not begin to determine if she can sing at all, given the extent of the use of artificial enhancements.
You will find those very rhotic 'R’s in the Lancashire accent, especially around Burnley way, however, none of the rest of it would fit in with it.There is a certain sort of London region way of speaking the 'r’s so this might have its roots in that. I actually like the Mumford stuff.
The Eliza Doolittle thing is very much style over substance.The long use of the door sound is used quite a bit in Yorkshire, so that books, boots, look etc are the long ‘o’ sound, almost like having three long 'o’s in there.
There are a lot of middle class pretensions to working class credibility and some of these are versions of it.There is no need to do it either, just play and perform to your own talents and if its any good then it will sell, there seems a lot of ‘promotion’ and ‘marketing’ going on here.
I’m not going to dispute your theories about the accent, but I am going to defend her voice here. That’s not autotune - she steps very quickly from note to note (there’s a musical term for it I think, but I can’t remember it - fast and controlled staccato glissando?). I’ve heard her performing the song acoustically and her voice does the same thing. Here’s one example.
Compare the two versions, lots of double track there on the studio version, sorry, can’t stand her voice, terrible.
The tremelo in her voice is real, and not added, I’ll give you that but it is just too close to the soul warbling you hear and I hate.So thats her style, still cant tell if she can hit and hold a note though because of the warble in her voice, that can hide a lot of things.Sort of reminds me of Katie Melua’s style where she warbles around every note but does not seem to hold it.
Update
I found another live version where the voice affectations drop out a few times at the beginning, and she is all the better for it, plus you get the chance to hear her speaking voice.
So it’s been redefined? I thought “neo-folk” was an underground style of post-industrial/occultist folk music represented by Death In June, Current 93, etc.
The Moldy Peaches were popular before Regina Spektor but I don’t think Spektor’s voice sounds all that much like Kimya Dawson’s.
I don’t know the origin of the accents in those songs, but they grind my gears a little bit, especially Mumford. A similar band that I much prefer is Stornoway, I suppose they’re more indie-schmindie than cod-folk but at least in this song sound like they’re doing a similar thing. In Mumford the main singer sounds like he’s got way more of a put on accent. Put on accents are a stock in trade of pop music, but some people do them well, others terrible.
FWIW, Eliza’s voice sounds more like a British take on a soul style vocal.
Well, for what it’s worth, here’s my theory on it: singing has its own accent.
In Australia, where I am, people always complain that singers put on an American accent. To Australian ears, it does sort of sound American, because of the drawn out vowel sounds. But the singer dude from the backwoods of Texas who speaks with the thickest drawl you could imagine modifies his accent as much if not more than an Australian when he sings. And the Beatles certainly don’t sing in anything resembling the thick Liverpool accent they speak with.
The singer’s accent is just the natural way that you’re more or less obliged to go about it when you’re trying to sing words and hold a tune at the same time. For example, “love” always has to be “lurrrrv”. (If you tried singing “love” in a recognizably Australian accent, you’d come out sounding like a crow being ill.)
But, perverse though it is, you get a bunch of misguided people coming along thinking it would be more “authentic” to completely butcher their vocal performance by doing that half-speaking, half-singing thing just so they can preserve a regional accent.
