So what's up with UK singers sounding non-UK like?

[Brewkowski]

OK, so was listening to a lot of different music that I normally listen to (Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Queen, Clapton, Rolling Stones, Mungo Jerry, Mumford and Sons, etc) and I just got to wondering what makes some of them sing in a more noticeable accent? Maybe it's more that I normally listen to Brit bands that were more classic rock era and perhaps influenced by more R&B/Blues bands from America? Doe it depend on where they're from regionally, style of music, or just that most people want to sound like Americans!

 

[Homercidal]

I heard one time that Mrs. Brown's Daughter (Herman's Hermits??) was the first US pop hit for a British band where they sang with their own accents. Until that point the bands had always strove to have an American accent to sound more natural to us.

 

[MalFet]

Very cool question. Here's my take on an answer (the Bukowski version):

Singing does weird things to a language. Specifically here, it minimizes or even erases many of the sound differences between American and British English. There are some technical reasons for this, but I'll leave them out for now. The punchline, though, is that it's not necessarily the case that British singers are trying to sound American. Rather, because singing makes it harder to hear distinctively British speech features, a singer's accent will sound more "American" to Americans (and, conversely, an American singer will in some circumstances sound more "British" to Brits).

Herman's Hermits is an interesting exception here. They really seem to go out of their way to drive home just how incredibly British they are, and I suspect that if we were to bust out the spectrograph on the lead singer we'd actually find that the contrasts are more exaggerated when he sings than when he talks. If anything's intentional, it's actually sounding British, not American.

So, basically, the natural course of things would be for British singing and American singing to converge on something that sounds very similar, but musicians on both sides of the pond can exaggerate the differences for stylistic effect. This even happens in different songs by the same singer. Compare "When I'm Sixty-Four" to "Helter Skelter", for example.

 

[aiptasia]

It can also be done to great effect, too. Rock and Roll is a distinctly American musical form, and Brits of the era were striving to emulate the works of early black R&B, Soul and rock artists. Most notably, the same influences on early white American rock. It turns out that they wanted to be Chuck Barry, Bo Didley, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson just as much as the rest of us.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Very cool question. Here's my take on an answer (the Bukowski version):

Singing does weird things to a language. Specifically here, it minimizes or even erases many of the sound differences between American and British English. There are some technical reasons for this, but I'll leave them out for now. The punchline, though, is that it's not necessarily the case that British singers are trying to sound American. Rather, because singing makes it harder to hear distinctively British speech features, a singer's accent will sound more "American" to Americans (and, conversely, an American singer will in some circumstances sound more "British" to Brits).

Herman's Hermits is an interesting exception here. They really seem to go out of their way to drive home just how incredibly British they are, and I suspect that if we were to bust out the spectrograph on the lead singer we'd actually find that the contrasts are more exaggerated when he sings than when he talks. If anything's intentional, it's actually sounding British, not American.

So, basically, the natural course of things would be for British singing and American singing to converge on something that sounds very similar, but musicians on both sides of the pond can exaggerate the differences for stylistic effect. This even happens in different songs by the same singer. Compare "When I'm Sixty-Four" to "Helter Skelter", for example.

I said exactly this in an old thread somewhere........Well, not exactly, you are much more edumacated. I eventually ended up saying in that thread that singers mostly end up with a mid-Atlantic accent.

Mick Jagger will often do a phoney accent if it fits the song, given their influences I can see why they do it. Others just tend to sound American to American ears. The thing that many Americans do not realise is that there is a vast variety of British accents and dialects, and might not take this into account on the odd occasion that it can be heard in the song. What? That didn't sound cockney or posh, he must be trying to sound American.

I am a huge classic rock fan, and that is the only genre I listen to on the car radio. 40-50% of that genre tends to be British, and I am aware of this phenomenon so I sometimes look out for it. In all honesty, I think it is a fallacy.

Edit: Sorry about this, I am not trying to be antagonistic, but another reason might be that people who sing certain styles of rock song are more kinda whiney than singing......And, well, um.....Whiny is kinda most American accents (To English ears) just like we sound all faw faw faw to you guys.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

It can also be done to great effect, too. Rock and Roll is a distinctly American musical form, and Brits of the era were striving to emulate the works of early black R&B, Soul and rock artists. Most notably, the same influences on early white American rock. It turns out that they wanted to be Chuck Barry, Bo Didley, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson just as much as the rest of us.

In the 60's, yes. That took a turn in the 70's though, and there became a greater distinction over the Atlantic with the advent of Prog Rock in the UK.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Hmm! Spurred on by curiosity, and taking advantage of the fact that I am alone and unobserved in the house, I just did a little experiment.

I spoke in my normal (English) voice. The voice felt like it was generated from the middle/middle higher part of my neck.
I faked an atrocious Southern Alabamasippy (that particular effort deserved a new word) accent.....It seemed to come from the back of the mouth.
I then did an 18 year old American girl.........Oh yeah!!.....Um, I mean I did the voice of one that has that typically fake sort of croakiness when the say "Whateeevvver" and it seemed to come from in-between the previous two.

Rock singers, more often than not being untrained and/or simply adopting a voice to project what they want in a song could use any part of their throaty mouthy things to get the sound they want (Famously like Lennon lying down to sing Revolution)
Maybe that kinda thing has something to do with it?

Oh yes....and speaking with an English accent, but using the part of me that I used for the fake American accent made me sound more American!!



Hmmm....Tenors. How American does an American tenor sound?

 

[Homercidal]

Tenors are trained to project their voice with the most clarity and optimum tone as decided by masters of classic music. They aren't supposed to show emotion in the voice if it supersedes the tone and volume of the piece.

Other forms of vocal music generally follow the philosophy that the emotion shown in a performance will generally take precedence over tone and sometimes even pitch.

 

[TxBrew]

The way I see it is this. They want to confuse us and take us back over. Science.