Poll of the Day > Have you noticed that BRITISH people sound AMERICAN when they Sing???

(+) Yeah! (+)

why is it that british singers sound american when they sing? you can't hear their accents anymore when they do...

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/wm/live/1280_640/images/live/p0/3g/vh/p03gvhdm.jpg
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I... what?
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uh i think you havent listened to many british singers

Full Throttle posted...

Do you think british singers sound american when they sing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0onXhyLlE
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I think he means they lose their accent to some degree. which unless you count country music most americans do also.
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Yeah, even people who don't speak English well (or at all) do when they sing an English song.
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hmmm no? I can usually tell where a band is from by the accent of the singer. I guess all pop singers with accents would want to change their accent. But I don't really listen to pop music.

Ireland
-Twin Atlantic

Italy
-30 miles

Australia
-The Decline
- Camp Cope

Uk
-Canterbury
-Maximo Park

that's literally off the top of my head.
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not all of them. i've noticed that a lot do. just depends on if you want to keep it while singing.
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wwinterj25 posted...

Full Throttle posted...

Do you think british singers sound american when they sing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0onXhyLlE

I really need to get around to watching that. It was kind of a lame gag, but after the first 20 seconds of yelling at his car I started giggling.
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The U.S. market for media it huge so I imagine many pander to that or at least emulate what they hear from there since they associate a certain sound with the genre.

dedbus posted...

The U.S. market for media it huge so I imagine many pander to that or at least emulate what they hear from there since they associate a certain sound with the genre.

I'm a Brit, and I think that's pretty spot on.
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Zeus posted...

I really need to get around to watching that. It was kind of a lame gag, but after the first 20 seconds of yelling at his car I started giggling.

Faulty Towers is awesome.
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Singing is so fundamentally different from speaking that accents rarely persist. You can get characteristics of your native language coming through in singing (Italian, for example, is a very bright language with lots of resonance toward the front of the mouth, which is good for classical singing and something that people who normally speak a darker language like English or German have to learn), but when you start elongating vowels the way one does when singing, that tends to keep accents from coming through.

Though, if anything, good technique calls for other English-speakers to sound more British, since harder R's are a terrible sound to try to sing through. That's less emphasized in pop music, because nothing about good singing technique is typically emphasized in pop music, but if you start doing any classical singing and you try to pronounce "heart" like a North American would, you're going to have a rough time.
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some of them do, some of them don't. for example Morrissey doesn't sound American at all
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