samarm: Obladi obladah?? (or however you spell it). That would be my WAG anyway
Yes, you’re right. In fact my singing teacher used to hate the tendency in a lot of popular music to voice consonants as though they were vowels - n’s and m’s especially. There’s definitely a different discipline at work between different styles of singing.
Yes, you’re right. In fact my singing teacher used to hate the tendency in a lot of popular music to voice consonants as though they were vowels - n’s and m’s especially. There’s definitely a different discipline at work between different styles of singing.
Well.that explains Gomer Pyle 
Though I’m sure this is a beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder situation, IMO the English accent just sounds silly when sung, while the American one sounds cool. Think of Marc Bolan “let’s dahnce, take a chahnce”. Sounds crap. The (southern) English accent is harsh and staccato due to our glottal stops and dropping of trailing Rs.
Irish singers don’t have to moderate their accent, because it also avoids the above problems.
It’s a red herring. The Brits are trying to sound American, but the Americans are trying to sound Canadian.
When you realize that all Western culture comes from Canada, this makes more sense.
The runner-up in last year’s Pop Idol contest here in the UK was a lad called Gareth Gates, and he displayed exactly this phenomenon.
When speaking normally, and especially in front of the cameras and under pressure, he had a v pronounced stutter, but as soon as he began to sing the stutter disappeared completely.
There was one rather touching moment on stage when he tried to dedicate a song to his mother but was unable to get the words out, so he immediately dropped into an improvised ballad and the dedication came out fine.
Gareth Gates was caught recently miming at a concert the other week. He was singing the songs live but he was miming to the banter between the songs. He also holds up cards for the audience.
Bless
I can understand British singers sounding American because a lot of their music(in earlier rock n roll) was just American blues and R&B with some fey windowdressing. What I really don’t get is American singers sounding English like The White Stripes or Green Day. WTF? I grew up listening to the Clash, too, but being an American Southerner, I know I’d sound like a damn fool aping Joe Strummer or Paul Weller.
No mention of the fact that those British acts were trying to imitate Black Americans? The early Beatles and Stones trying their best Chuck Berry imitations? Joe Cocker getting signed to a contract because he sounded exactly like Ray Charles?
White Americans used to sing very distinctly: think Bing Crosby and the like. Then rock and roll made everyone sing in a style that was previously reserved for Black folks. The question might be: when did white folks, American and British, forget that they appropriated this singing style?
I’m with the posters who say it’s simply a case of British musicians imitating the vocalizations of their Rock ‘n’ Roll predecessors. The Beatles, the Stones and Clapton were all imitating American Blues, R&B and R&R singers, and later acts have just carried on the tradition of “singing American.”
And the phenomenon is a two-way street. There are American punk bands like Green Day and Rancid which seem to be doing their best to imitate Joe Strummer’s cockney vocalizations.
Plus, as already mentioned, there are plenty of bands which manage to sing Rock with their English accents intact, from The Smiths to Oasis to Coldplay.
hapaXL wrote:
Maybe up North. But in the South, there was always a cross-pollinization of white and black styles. Think Jimmie Rodgers.
“cross-pollination,” I meant
Rancid and Green Day are punks from California and they sing like California punks. That accent is not even remotely British.
There has got to be more to it that just trying to sound American. Try speaking with an English accent (if you are American) or a French or Boston accent. It sounds rediculous, and even if you have worked on it a long time it is obvious to native speakers.
I think the Beatles were trying to sound like Elvis Presley at least as much as Chuck Berry.
When I drink, (or, rarely, when I am nervous,) I develop an unshakable east London accent. God alone knows why this is so.
Regarding the blues hijack-- have you ever heard traditional Somali folk music? Apart from the language, and the slightly different sound of the stringed instruments involved, it sounds pretty much exactly like delta blues (Or rather delta blues sounds like Somali folk music.)
When the Beatles first landed in New York, in 1964, the men from the press asked: “Why do you talk like Englishmen but sing like Americans?”
They answered: “It sells better.”
Billy Bragg sounds very English when he sings. Peter Gabriel, in the early Genesis days (“Supper’s Ready”), also sounded far more English than American. Starting with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and continuing in his solo career, he got that neutral, “Mid-Atlantic” accent, which sounds equally normal in both England and America.
Joe Cocker and Roger Daltrey put on a distinctly American accent, but a lot of the other examples here I would call “Mid-Atlantic.” McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison all pioneered it. Phil Collins mastered it. It’s also used in broadcasting.
The Beatles only sang one song in actual Scouse, and that was the little ditty “Maggie Mae” (not to be confused with Rod Stewart’s hit), on the Let It Be album. I could scarcely understand a word of it.
Would anyone claiming that British singer X sounds like an American or American singer Y sounds like an Briton care to back up their claims with some evidence? Examples? I don’t just mean naming songs, either. I’m wondering which set of phonetic features you’re referring to and which dialect they are supposed to sound like.
-fh
hazel-rah:
Do it yourself. Most people don’t listen to music counting vowel sound occurrences, etc. Nor do you have to do that to be able to discern that a singer sounds American or British. Besides being pedantic geekery, it just plain takes the fun out of listening.