Why British Singers Lose Their Accent When Singing
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
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In this video:
Mick Jagger, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Ed Sheeran, Phil Collins and George Michael all grew up in or near London and have very recognizably British accents. Once on stage, they sing like someone who grew up in New England rather than old. Yet another example is Adele, who has a lovely speaking voice, a very heavy cockney accent, yet her singing pipes do not indicate her dialect. One might argue that Adele’s speaking and singing voices were two different people if listening without visuals. Going beyond the British, we see the same thing with other non-American musicians, such as the Swedish band ABBA, and many others singing in English, yet from various places around the world. It seems like no matter where you’re from, if you’re singing in English, you’re probably singing with an American accent, unless you’re actively trying to retain your native accent, which some groups do.
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Mica Paris and Kylie Minogue also.
Lyrical singing is the All-Dialect of the world.
@@dndrequiem Kylie is from australia
@@dndrequiem, and, zzdzvc FCC. he
Confirms that the American accent is the default, take that Brits.
m'Tato The "British accent" was actually a cultural fad that started after america was colonized. that is why it is not prevalent in American English. some cities like Boston had a lot of cultural influence from England due to early ports being located there. specifically the non-rhotic speaking is a remnant of the beginnings of the "British Accent".
Which American Accent? We have even more than the Brits do and they've got a crapload of different accents, lol
Yeah I guess we just speak English the way its meant to be spoken.
Just had to point this out to another person. I'll take my time to copy and paste.
Neutrality doesn't equate to what a thing SHOULD or SHOULDN'T be. It certainly doesn't equal "default"
It is literally the absence of having no distinct features and neutral is exactly what's talked about in the video. A neutral English accent is neither American or British.
So, basically, yes, the American accent IS an accent, it isn't the "default" accent and that's not what he was saying in the video.
Just because most vegetable oils are flavourless, doesn't mean all vegetable oils are ment to be flavourless XD
It's the same with accents XD
Then there is the strange case of Cher. When she sings she adopts bizarre accent never before heard on the planet earth.
Nikki Minaj tries to sound British in atleast some of her songs.
Pezfeo Sorry, I've never heard this Minaj person sing. I think I know what she looks like.
Pezfeo I think it has more to do with her trini descent
Patrick Boyle yeah her voice is awesome. I love her songs
Patrick Boyle I noticed that too. It's like a southern accent (maybe a Texas one), but it sounds a bit different.
It's also because singing and speaking are dealt with in different parts of the brain. It's why someone that stutters horribly when speaking doesn't stutter at all when they sing.
Case in point, Ozzy Osbourne.
DD Holley true
@@wmdkitty truth...i remember the old Warcraft commercials where they actually had to use subtitles against Ozzy.
What about the Scatman?
After just now watching this vid, I had to scroll down to find this comment. I knew one had to be here, I can't be the only one who immediately thought of this. Back when I grew up in the 70s, country singer Mel Tillis was used as the example of some who stuttered badly, but could sing just fine, and the reason why.
Simon, why don't you SING for us and demonstrate BOTH accents!!! That would be GLORIOUS!
This guy leaves out the fact that most popular music genre came out of America, so the tend to copy the accent. The are plenty of British, Australian etc who sing in their accent.
@@stn7172 Lilly Allen
I was wondering if he might sing to prove the point.
I couldn't understand a single word he said, he should have sung it.
This comment made my dayyy😂😂
AFTERBURNER Underrated comment
Would have been funny xD
but i think (for a german) i can understand britisch english more easily than the typical american accent (i cant watch american tv without sub, with british series its not a problem) and even when they are singing they are more easily understood, they speak more "standard" school-english when singing and when talking the pronouncing is a little bit like german.
Fuu Hoji no one cares
@@fuuhoji648 That's what I assumed!
Paul McCartney once stated that the reason he, and the other Beatles, lost their accent (and they WERE aware of it) was that they were trying to sing like the rock musicians, nearly all of them Americans, that preceded them and that they idolized. If Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly sounded a certain way, then that's the way rock n roll was supposed to be sung, and the Beatles complied with that sound. Apparently, apart from everything else in this video, many other rock bands thought the same way.
I was very surprised when I heard Freddie Mercury speak normally for the first time. Very unexpected.
A is for America Freddie Mercury wasn’t English though. He was from Tanzania.
@@adamcreed5455 Well, he was raised in India and born in an Indian operation within Zanzibar, Tanzania so he was effectively born and raised in an Indian bubble.
I thought the Beatles were American when I was a little kid.
@@adamcreed5455 he still speaks with a british accent, as do a lot of indians who speak english.
@@jaygasper4853you didn't hear much of their music then
I'm American and I have always wondered about this. Once I began taking voice lessons, I thought it may have something to do with the mechanisms of singing, as you explained so well. Thank you.
American accent is pretty easy to do and appeals to all as for music it just sounds better overall
@@raihantahmid7272 What you could deduce is that the American English accent is correct and that any other is an affectation.😂
I can tell you why. BAck when I was growing up, I volunteered in a nursing home. Some of the patients who had a history of stroke, could not speak. But they COULD sing. Demonstrating that singing and speaking come from different parts of the brain. When we examine accents, we find that if you learn a new language before puberty, you will be able to speak that language without an accent. Something 'finalizes' in the speech area of the brain. But apparently does not, in regard to whatever area is involved in singing. Kate Nash's songs appear to be not so much singing, but talking in a more melodic manner, but still is speech, rather than singing. Which is why rappers have accents; they're not singing, they're talking.
I've seen a few strange things about babies:
Until app. 6 months of age they can recognize individual chimps/ primates by their face.
They can also detect slight accents in language that adults usually don't notice.
Very young babies have a really powerful grip, they can grasp/ dangle from a clothes-line for app. 4 min.
In the movie "The Kings Speech" he has the stuttering Prince sing similar to what you said.
Cuzeg Spiked
have learnt*
English babies don't have American accents. Where did you get this idea that anyone could learn a language without learning an accent ? Do you really think Americans don't have an accent?
If it's on the internet, it must be true ;)
Midwestern Americans "don't have an accent" (or have very little accent) in the sense of having fluctuations of pitch and volume between syllables. Of course they have an "accent" in the sense of "a distinctive style of speech." That style in their case is to be unaccented. It's not so much a Midwestern accent as a Midwestern monotone. It's thus not some arrogant claim that "the whole world has an accent except people who talk like us." It's that the Midwestern American way of speaking is LITERALLY without accent.
As a musician, I'll propose a theory that many colloquial genres have melodic styles that follow common speech patterns in the regions they were developed. Take American country music, for example. The rise and fall of the pitches as well as inflections often allow for a drawl that is common in the American Southeast. Another example may be the kind of folk Irish music that I've heard. I have a hard time singing it without falling into a pseudo-Irish accent and I suspect that's why it's written that way.
I agree, it's kinda like with Gospel for me, it's hard to not sing Gospel without a soulful or more african american singing accent, as most of the Gospel songs I've ever heard sung and listened to are sung in that style, if you get what I mean.
Wow! That explains quite a bit, but I think it might work both ways. When I was in the Navy, a shipmate told me that no matter what kind of music I sing, it sounds like country music. But he was a yankee, therefore more likely to notice Southern inflections than I was.
Great explanation!
The only singers I've heard that retain their accents when singing are Irish and Scottish singers, like Dave King of Flogging Molly. There's also the song I'm Gonna Be by The Proclaimers (you know the one, 'and I would walk 500 miles/and i would walk 500 more'), which is so Scottish you get drunk just listening to it
Kinda late, but you forgot Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. :)
And I would walk 500 miles and I would wagdgdhdhxjxydgdhdhxhxhxjx
I'm Scottish and not drunk presently
You must not listen to Bro country in the US. Some of them would do well to lose their accents.
Disappointed it didn't include a section of Simon trying to sing to see how his accent reacted.
Well... is he a singer? You don't lose your accent just cause you sing, you gotta know how to sing for that to happen
Did my ears correctly that he said the standard American English is baseline neutral English?
ayyy
John Labus Yes. Though there are many American accents that stray just as far from neutral as Cockney British accents do.
John Labus The accent, not the language.
Galacticboy2009 Cockney doesn't stray fast from neutral, Geordie does, brummie does, scouse does, Americans need translators for those accents, Brits don't need translations for any american accents
+ava lawrence I definitely struggle to understand some American accents.
I liked this for acknowledging the hardships of the mobile user.
Zappyguy111 im sorry you cant afford a computer
You're condolences are appreciated.
ChrisD4335 i have a computer. I'm in bed.
nones talking too you dalton hastings
Zappyguy111 hello
I was surprised that you included Mick Jagger as one of the singers who sounds American. I always thought he was one of the few who sounded more English when singing. Although it does vary depending on the song. There are some songs where he intentionally used an American accent (such as Dead Flowers or Far Away Eyes).
When I was young, I used to think a lot of American singers sounded English because they didn't pronounce the R's very much when they sang. When you're a kid in America, the lack of R's is usually the first thing you notice about English accents.
Kate Nash doesn't really sing, she talks with a slight harmony. That is why her accent remains mostly.
My daily dose of something interesting to offset the news. Thank you again!
+John Cox You're very welcome :-)
I always wondered why singers sounded Canadian (unless your from Newfoundland). Thanks!
We're melodic. :-D
I guess we're close to New England.
Today I Found Out As a small time classical singer I'm surprised I didn't hear that the way singers train had anything to do with the change in accent. When we train, and perform we modify your videos to produce a clean, pure tone as well as to protect ourselves from doing long term damage to our voices which can happen quickly if we beat on them. Further the rhotic American letter R sound is actually the hardest sound to produce, so that sound is frequently modified as well. I'm not sure how much that plays into the musical accent change, but My initial thought was that it would. I'd be interested in any thoughts you mght have been that.
I can't remember his name, but back in the day there was a country-western singer who had an intractable stutter/stammer when speaking. But when singing, without effort, the problem would disappear. Wonderful! Another thing is that during "the British Invasion" of the sixties, a fair number of singers made the effort to retain their English accents in singing so that no one would in any doubt that they were part of that popular movement.
Mel Tillis
This is basically the same thing for Vietnamese. Vietnam, like the English speaking world, VN also a diverse amount of dialects/accents that can vary a lot from each other. So a lot of pop and bolero songs in VN are usually sung in some variant of the Hanoian dialect (the defacto standard). It doesn't matter what region the artists is from, they usually can sing in the defacto VN accent. The only time they sing in their native dialect is when they sing regional folk songs or opera
Simon's transition was nearly supernatural... He went from a 3 to a 9 in just a couple years. Absolute legend.
Lily Allen, Robbie Williams, Ronan Keating, Cerys Matthews, Damon Albarn from Blur, Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics. I'd say they all have a pretty strong regional accent that comes out in their singing.
Johnny Rotten has got a damn obvious accent while singing xD, so do the guys from parody band amateur transplant
Ace of Base at times too
70s British Punk Rock bands sing in their own beautiful accents.
This video: Why British Singers Lose Their Accent When Singing
Tom Felton: Hold my butterbeer
wilbur soot: *hi*
I’m an American and my favorite band is Depeche Mode, I always loved how I could still hear their British accent in their songs. And thought it was strange I couldn’t hear other people’s accents in songs...
Dude, you look like Dr. Evil. xD
I would like someone to give me... one miiiilllion dollars... ;-)
LOL
More like Ralph Fiennes
Isn't Ralph Fiennes truly Dr. Evil with hair? =:0)
Now I cannot un-see Lord Voldemort.
Let's be honest a big part of this is the influence of American music. The likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were influenced by the likes of Chuck Barry and Little Richard
Totally agree. I don't find the reasons given in this video to be at all plausible. It seems far more likely that those who adopt an American accent when singing are simply subconsciously imitating the accents used in the songs they grew up listening to.
InterestingName Americans love accents, especially English ones. It's pretty conceited to assume that American culture is so dominant and favored by every other country. Unless you are an expert in linguistics, you can't say for sure.
The Beatles (in my opinion) are one of the groups that stick pretty faithfully to their own accents (most of the time).
I'm proud of my Heavy Brooklyn NY accent. Soo many people try imitate the New York accent.
The Beatles do sound quite scouse. Their Liverpool accents slipped out in some songs, maybe unintentionally I don't know. Like in Love Me Do "I'll always be true" they roll the r in "true". And in Blackbird Paul pronounces it "blackburd", which is scouse as well as saying "blackberd" like I do but I'm from a different part of Liverpool than him. Maybe it's just because I'm from Liverpool that I recognise this because it is very subtle
I think the other takeaway here is that the American accent it's probably very neutral precisely because it's what happened when people from all over the world came together to try and speak one language, which wound up making a very phonetically homogenous and neutral sound that a wider swath of people can understand.
I live in Pennsylvania where we have a very nasal accent so in my choir days growing up, we were taught to soften our vowels, and I found it much easier to sing with more of a British accent when I do so classically. I alter my inflection depending on the song (and language I’m singing in), so pop songs I don’t sound like that, but classic pieces just sound better in that accent (to me). Since these are pop singers, I can understand the sound shift from their regular speaking voice to more neutral.
General rules for singing also compel people to drop their postvocalic r's, though -- and postvocalic r's are a big marker of a typical American accent.
In my Junior High choir, we were told to sing our R's with a British accent. They could also have said New England or Lunenburg. (I'm from the east coast of Canada).
Which was pretty useless advice, because you'll find the full spectrum of rhoticity in Britain depending on who you speak to. So there really is no such thing as a "British way" to pronounce an R...
scottishwildcat In Northern Ireland alone you'll find anything from a Cornish-style rhoticity to an Irish-style to a Scottish style etc. The English planters arrived just in time to maintain their post-vowel 'r's, however, so there is no English-sounding accent here.
scottishwildcat Back in the eighties the only accent we heard on TV was received English. That's what we Canadians thought of as a British accent.
Yeah, I was thinking about the 'r' thing too. it doesn't make much sense.
I think this video needed examples.
And I would walk 500 hundred miles...
they're not really singing, more shouting lol
keeponrockin, And I would walk 500 more.
Just to be the man to walk 1000 miles
keeponrockin to fall down at your door
YA DA DA DO
I first noticed this phenomenon when I was a child, and I always wondered about it. Thank you for clearing this up!
Thanks! This video was most helpful and fun
I always thought it was because groups like The Beatles and The Stones wanted to emulate Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and other 50's R&B singers. And then the next generation all wanted to emulate The Beatles and The Stones.
When I was at school in compulsory choir lessons (they literally made you sing to the music teacher and if you could hold a note you had to attend choir) we were told if you sing with an accent you're not singing you're talking and this was considered bad. We hadn't really thought about it as we all naturally lost our accents when singing anyway, but it's interesting to hear a theory to what we were told as bald fact.
You can't "lose your accent" the way it's described in this video, that implies that below a layer of regional accent everyone has a baseline of American Midwestern, which is complete nonsense
It’s all Ohio after all, specifically the Erie coast
@@highteainquisitor7907 I don't understand your reply
he is indeed talking shit. The accents adopted in singing are for melodious intent under the influence of AMerican culture (music, tv and film)
I do find this explanation weird as well. Also a bit bias on the singers half. If your culture consumes another cultures music and basis/consensus of that music. Ofcourse singing like them will feel natural, since that's all you know or like in this case.
We know singing like mainland Americans aren't even natural when you're socially isolated & have your own main production of music. Jamaican (and other Patwa speaking countries -minus the US Afro Americans) due to this. Even with in the US actually (both musical accents/like genres and natural accents used in every day speech)
-Gospel singers (musical accent)
-Blues singers (musical & natural accent)
-Jazz singers (musical accent)
-Country singers (natural accent)
-Zydeco singers (natural accent)
- Rhythm & Blues singers (musical accent)
All display different techniques on how to sing. This is with the same culture or basis of the same culture (Afro-Americans)
Also natural accent definitely sinks in at some point. Frank Ocean singing would totally sound different if he was of a different background.
Other noticeable accents in English is Irish 🇮🇪, Scotish 🏴 and West African (Nigeria 🇳🇬, Ghana 🇬🇭 Liberia 🇱🇷, Sierra Leone🇸🇱 etc) singing.
@@quincy9908 I mean it happens that some British singers put on a fake American accent when they sing, but that's just it, they are imitating a different accent, not "losing" theirs
Now i l know! Thank you for this info. Very helpful 😙
Another factor is the amount of American pop culture (Music, Movies, and TV) we consume. Particularly in Australia and New Zealand where we produce very little of our own compared to the US. Rarely when you're learning to sign do you do original songs, you start practicing covers most of the popular ones are American (or use the accent). This would account for why American accents are more common (or stronger) in our songs today than when we were exposed to it less often.
Bowie would come and go with his accent over the years. Maybe it was the point of his characters
I think part of it, with Bowie, depended on what song/style of the song. I think he made a conscious effort, to keep his accent. When listening to Ed Sheeran, I often hear bits of his accent, in his songs as well. I actually like it. It makes them more unique.
Maybe that's how it is these days in mainstream pop music, but some of my very favorite British acts kept their accents. Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits was probably my first celebrity crush! How about the Zombies, and the rest of the "British Invasion?" Then later we had Ian Dury, John Lydon, the Specials, Psychedelic Furs, the (English) Beat, the Au Pairs, the Cure, Gang of Four, Joan Armatrading, Billy Bragg, and on and on. Not sounding generic American doesn't make a singer's voice any less melodious.
And Irish. And Australian. And Scottish. And so on. It's because of the influence of American music and the need to break into that market.
True that's how I see it
When you sing, you change the shape of how you pronounce words. Once you start using your diaphragm and match pitch, you have to shape your lips more dramatically. Hence the accent turning neutral.
You too, no I mean U2...ha. Your right bro.
No it isn’
*hits joint* what did English singers sound like before America became a country then, man!?
Tom Tom He said "what many people would describe as an American an accent" or "what is often described as an American accent"
Not "what isss an American accent"
It's only referred to as that because that's how most people who aren't American would describe it.
The general American accent is actually CLOSER to the original British accent. So when English was being developed as a language people didn't sound the way they sound in the UK now ( i know there are 10000000 different accents but the American accent is still the closest to the OG accent) therefore since it was developed with an accent closer to that of the general American it would make sense that it would sound better while singing and seems more clear, concise and very natural while speaking. Because the language was made for that slightly off American accent.
The SOUTHERN accent is closer to original British. General American accent is more influenced by Irish.
Yet strangely, Americans who come here on holiday need dictionaries and articles on the likes of Irish Central to help them understand Hiberno-English,( that is, English as it's spoken by the Irish in Ireland),as well a struggling with the accents of Ireland,especially ones such as rural Tipperary and Kerry!
Whenever I sing a song my accent tends to vary depending on how the original artist sounded. For example if I were to sing a song by an American artist or someone singing with an American accent, it will alter the way that I sing the song. Although my own English accent is still noticeable a lot of the time.
Early David Bowie notably sang with a Cockney accent - he was emulating Anthony Newley, one of his idols. As a FIlipino it does not cease to amaze me that a lot olf Filipino pop stars sing with an American intonation when singing in Tagalog. Not to mention their flawlessly accented English renditions.
David Bowie was the only British Singer that I know who always kept singing with his british accent, and I really appreciate Singers who don't hide their accent ✌
I love how the lack of an accent is called an "American Accent"
I love how you believe there's ONE American accent.
Funny because that's not what I said. In fact I know that there are five distinct accents in my home state alone.
Alex Stark Which State?
bcubed72 Americans refer to the British accent as if it exists, why can't we do the reverse?
+Keith Laws
When did I say Americans don't have an accent, or that somebody "isn't allowed" to say that we do?
Not Liam Gallagher, John Lydon, Morrissey, Ian Brown, Damon Albarn...
Mathias Stuhl That is true. And those adds are spot on as well. That guy is called Alex Turner.
Yeah, Damon sounds very British and Liam sounds different to his speaking voice. As do the others really.
love these videos!
I’ve heard that explanation not long ago, but for many years I did wonder about that. Thanks Simon always love your show
I remember wondering about this when the Spice Girls first came around
Omg me too! 😂
Hilarious. Just said this to my wife lol
haha interesting. When I first heard the Spice Girls the British accent really stood out. I didn't hear American
I was under the impression that the American accent was an old English accent that was lost over time in England.
I think one theory is that the "American Accent" which is a Mid-West American Accent, actually, supposedly sounds closer to the English accent of a very long time ago than the current, stereotypical, English accent.
But, nah.
glenrkat I don't know for sure, but heard it was actually the Appalachian accent of the western Carolinas to the southern ohio river valley that was supposed to sound the most like a pre Victorian English accent due to the lack of diversity and outback nature of the region.
Dragon Slayer Ornstein no. lol
Modern British accents and American accents are all descended from the same English, and began diverging in the 16th/17th century. So neither is really closer to the older forms of English. R-dropping didn't happen till the end of the 18th century, hence why Americans and some Brits don't drop their R's, while vowels changed on both sides of the pond.
I've always wondered this! I knew I wasn't crazy.
Freaks me out when I watch an old video where Simon doesn't have the beard and glasses.
I know right why doesn't anyone mention this at all.
He look 20 years younger
Without the glasses and beard he looks like a total tool.
He looks like a rust character
just like I had said in a previous video, American English is the proper English
I Am Because apparently people from ENGLAND dont know ENGLISH.
Maxime Couture It's not even neutral. Listen to a non-american imitate us. It's really nasal.
StartAndPlay They know their English, but Americans know the better and improved English that everyone understands. Maybe we should just call it American. This explains why Canadians have a similar accent. I5's the clearly logical next step. If a word has an 'r', then pronounce that 'r'! No offense Boston.
StartAndPlay They know their English, but Americans know the better and improved English that everyone understands.
I Am lol
4:20
"Until she pick up her first guitar"
-Show her with a bass
Basses *are* guitars. That's why the full name of the instrument is bass guitar.
@@PrezVeto Okay but then it should've be "until she picked up her first BASS guitar"they do fall under the category of guitars but it's not the same thing
A "bass" is a kind of guitar. There are many kids of guitars why should we only differentiate between bass and all other kinds?
*Davie504 is seething*
@@sirdickmccockneyiii5134 was going to comment the same thing
That was very interesting. Great video.
When I was quite young I noticed this change in accent. But I could find noone who agreed. So now It's a pleasure to find this subject online.
Once again, something my parents denied, has come true.
what about Asian singers that sing in English? They often sing In un-understandable accents.
Yeah like I went through a major j-metal/doujin phase and singers like MeramiPop still sing with very, VERY thick accents in English
Even Hello Sleepwalkers, though they can have some great English (see Ray of Sunshine) are still noticeably accented
I think the video was mostly just talking about native English speakers without much thought about people whose first language isn't English
Most European languages share a lot of similarities. Speaking or singing from one to another is going to have pleasant results. Asiatic languages have little similarity to English. Many Asian people learn English in school but get little chance to use it. When they do use it, it's going to sound rough.
I think it's just due to the lack of exposure to people who speak it frequently. The are little nuances in the way every culture speaks that can be hard to pick up on unless you speak often with a native speaker. For example I had a crazy as hell time trying to learn the Japanese R because even though it's an R sound it was nuanced to have a slight L and D characteristic added to it.
Carlos Rios their dialect doesn't require some muscle structures that we use so it's difficult for them to make the same sounds we do.
Yeah, they don't fully pronounce the words.
Go into any Karaoke bar, and you'll be treated to:
Aeee dee ih maeeeee ouaeeee!!!
Syd Barrett sounded British even while singing
Can’t understand a lick of Izzy Osborne when he is speaking, but miraculously can understand every word he sings. He should just live his life as a musical.
Consider the lyric;
“Do you wanna dance and hold my hand”.
‘Dance’ and ‘hand’ both have the short ‘a’ vowel sound in American English.., so the lyric sounds smoother.
In many other English accents ‘dance’ and ‘hand’ have differing ‘a’ vowel sounds, so the lyric sounds clunky to the ear.
(Yes, yes.., I know that’s an example that Sir Cliff came up with... but it’s valid!)
It's way more than 2 years since Kate Nash realised her talent! I first heard her in about 2006/07
When I joined the school choir (very long time ago) I started singing like I'd always sang ('British' accent). I realised everyone else was singing the pop songs in a certain way. I'd not long been exposed to pop music (I was brought up with classical and also taught to make 't's' extra loud when singing so you could hear the words more clearly when singing. People at secondary school were singing like the original singer of the pop song sang, as they knew it. It is true that it is easier to sing in an American accent though. This sounds bad, but I think the American accent sounds more 'lazy' - dropped ts, the vowel issue mentioned in this video, gonna/going to etc (I know a lot of us now say 'gonna'/'wanna' in Britain but that's adapted from American English) and easier to sing like he says in the video, but I don't think my whole accent and singing style would change if I hadn't heard others sing. One example of non American accent in singing which stood out to me was Daniel Bedingfield. Also, I don't think Adele should really be shown as one of the prime examples. Take 'chasing pavements' - you can clearly hear her accent there even if she adapts some Americanisms
As a writer, I am aware of anticipating you're audience's objections and addressing them. In this video, like so many others from the same folk on their other channels, I found myself saying, "Yes, but what about this.." and Simon dutifully responds with the answer. One reason I like these so much.
Back in the '60s it was extremely weird in the USA to hear the Beatles speak after we'd listened to them sing a million times. Their accents made their speech incomprehensible, especially in "A Hard Day's Night". For the first 10 minutes or so of this movie, we couldn't understand them at all.
I am an American who lived in England for two years. I went to church with mostly British people. I sang in church one Sunday and afterwards one of my British friends told me that when I sang I sounded "normal", and by normal she meant "British". Americans perceive British singers as sounding American, but from what I experienced, I was perceived as sounding British. Singers are taught to pronounce their words a certain way; in a more proper way than how we speak. You might say someone is "evil" - pronounced in American English as e-vul, but when sung it is pronounced e-ville. To sing the word e-vul sounds bad. Since Brits and Yanks both speak English, it makes sense we sing the same way.
Basically, we all lose our regional accent, and default to a more generic one which sounds closer to "normal" to people from other places.
Lol thats funny. So when we sing we sound british to them eh? Interesting
^ yeah. I wonder how much is just they way it it sort of sounds. Northern United states tends to have longer sounding sounds.. Whilst southern people have a fairly distinky tweak to, the yah, whie and sometimes aaah type of sounds. Main and northernwestern people seem to certain parts of their's consinsants. and roll Ah and Eh type sounds (Trainor for instance prounnces Finance as: Fee Nince. Family as almost Faoh MEE L Ay. . Title as TAyDile etc. Want (Wan' ) etc etc .
California as quite a few accents. LOL yes their's the beach and Valley girl ones. But San Franiciso, and they bay area leans towards a bit of a mix of Main and New York accent (likely from being a caostal city). Southern California (LA as an exception) has a distincitve Poppy energetic sound tending to emphasize faster consinants. T
I wonder if that means that English speakers sing with something like what has historically been called the Mid-Atlantic accent. If you watch old movies, you hear people talking with it all the time. It's neither American nor British ... just something in between.
Singing praise songs at a British church isn't a good way to base your hypothesis on
Surely the fact that rock music originated in the US would be a factor?
Some non-Jamaican reggae singers, for example, put on a Jamaican accent, presumably because the singers they're copying did.
PS If it's a result of how singing works, why don't classical singers sound American?
your theory makes more sense to me
Classical singers don't sound like anything really, except classical singers.
Cool video. I always wondered why singers lose their accent while singing.
When I was in London they were playing a lot of American music on the radio. And when I listen to an artist that sings in a British voice. Like Lilly Allen. I'm terrible at doing a British accent but if I have one of her songs stuck in my head I can't help but sing it in a British accent the way she does. And so since I think American music gets played a lot of the time globally. People of different cultures will subconsciously be taught to sing that way. That's what I think, but very interesting video, I've never thought of it in the way you went about it. Maybe it is just an easy way to sing too.
i agree that accents may become and some British accents may sound American. in the Uk bands from the north say Manchester or Liverpool sound very different from bands in London. The band Cast sound like they are from the North of England. Big country sound like they are from Scotland. I do know what you are saying but i think if you dig deeper then you may find its less common then you think.
Right! Billy Bragg
Some say American southern accents come from slowed down Scottish.
It's not just British. It's singing in English. You can hear it Israelis singing in English, like Ivri Lider (of The Young Professionals). I didn't know he had an accent from his music!
I read many, many years ago that many British singers admired the American blues singers, and were imitating those accents when signing.
What I always found intriguing was that the American country music singer Mel Tillis stuttered very badly when he spoke, yet never faltered once when singing. And he sang very well.
Sometimes when Ed Sheeran raps I can hear his accent come through :3
Ed Sheeran still sings with an English accent though but more like someone from South of England than an East Anglian. 🤔
Rapping is not singing.
0:58 well sounds like he hasn't heard Sean Paul sing.
Lisa Stansfield was the biggest shock for me when I heard an interview with her. Such a Manchester accent.
Two bands come to mind when people talk about accents and music, the proclaimers who do not loose their accent and twin Atlantic who also do not loose their accent, I think these two were some of the first instances of singers not intentionally putting on an accent
Also The Smiths
Holy cow! No beard? No glasses? Pre-voice lessons? Totally different channel!
The specific accent is called the Mid-Atlantic accent.
It's the American variation of Received Pronunciation.
Tom Ives yeah but the mid Atlantic accent was largely fabricated as has never really been spoken as a real accent
This goes the other way too in punk genres in the US. There’s a bit of a English tinge in a American punk bands. Green Day (mostly their old stuff), The Ramones, The Menzingers, Alkaline Trio (mostly in their newer stuff), to name a few
Yeah and it sounds like they're doing pantomime, or bad impressions. They really should stop, it's awful. Americans invented punk anyway.
This even expands somewhat to non-native English speakers. The biggest giveaway is usually how they pronounce certain sounds/letters like with some Asian singers having the same pronunciation of L/R, harder T sounds, etc due to their native language. Though overall they lose their accent, its just some pronunciation things that reveal that they aren't native English speakers.
Kate Nash only found out she had talent two years ago?
That would be about 7 years after her first big hit.
Did anyone notice the erroneous subtitles from 3:32-3:50.
That happens a lot with this channel.
It's something that happens very naturally to singers. The roots of all pop music are in the accent of Afro Americans from southern USA. The more blues based the music is, the better it sounds with an American accent. Having said that, there is tons of incredible rock music where British accents are heared. It's all good dawgs.
Watching Simon in these Old videos, is much like seeing a Pokemon evolving 😂
Those glasses and beard do more heavy lifting than my mom's boyfriend getting her off him.
Hmm, the singer in Chvrches is Scottish (as is the entire band), but you can still hear her accent in her vowels.
I had to check what year this video was released. ..Kate Nash...seriously? It's been a decade since she was anywhere near popular....
Right? Picked up a guitar "2 years ago"?
+brandybuck1984 Well these videos aren't made at the same time they are released.
brandybuck1984 The article it was based on was published to their website in 2013.
Lisa Axelsson Well they probably made the video in 2013.
Even in 2013, Kate Nash already released song publicly for almost 5 years at that point. I meant, even the SECOND album was released in 2010.
This video is release in 2016......
It's like making a video based on news reports from 1970 that release in 2017, and then saying we landed on the moon a year ago.
God, I love this channel.
Love this video, and he did admit that not all British singer's do this, but I would like to point out Bloc Party. One of the reasons I love this band so much is the strong accent. Also the Cranberries lol
Simon mistakenly labeled "dialect" as "accent." Not a big deal, but just wanted to say that...
It almost doesn't matter since lyrics in music tend to butcher any sense of correct grammar.
Embrigh it's poetry though? I'm not saying that poetry doesn't have any grammar rules, but usually when there are rules it's because it's a specific form of poem (ex: sonnets, haikus). When it comes to grammar rules, while there are some forms that have a more concrete structure, poetry overall tends to be more loose, which is really neat because then the author has a new tool to use to experiment with to get their desired point across.
For example: in Romeo and Juliet when they first meet at the party, they start speaking to each other in a sonnet. Now in Shakespeare, sonnets are just below song in terms of sacredness in speech. That tells you that what's happening between them is practically sacred and preordained (which we already knew because this was literally said in the prologue) and super important. It also shows how instantly they connect with each other on a base level. Not only is Romeo speaking to Juliet in poetry, but she's so completely in sync with him that she's replying back in poetry too. Furthermore, at the end of the scene, not only do they start *another* sonnet, but their lines break the typical iambic pentameter pattern. Romeo speaks five syllables, then Juliet speaks five, making a full line of iambic pentameter. Which is a fancy pants way of saying that they're so in sync that they're finishing each other's sentences in the span of a couple minutes after meeting for the first time.
Let's face it, if they sung with their natural accents, a lot of Brits would sound like Eliza Doolittle in 'My Fair Lady'. Probably would reduce sales quite a bit.
I wonder how much of it is due to the need to keep an open throat while singing, thus affecting how the vowels really sound. A very pure "uu" and "ee" tend to go haywire at the borders of ones modular range, so some singers learn to "tongue" the "uu" while forming an "o" at the throat, and in the case of "eee", the throat maintains an "ey". I think this probably affects accent too?
I always wanted to know this .. thanks...
I appreciate the effort and explanation offered in this video, but I think the main reason that British singers sometimes sound American is that we are hearing them play music whose aesthetic, tropes, techniques, etc. are heavily inspired by American music. If Paul McCartney grows up and hones his chops absorbing and mimicking artists like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, it's only natural he will absorb their accents to some extent, or at the very least become familiar enough with their features to adopt them believably. I even hear a slight reversal of this phenomenon with newer non-British artists whose vocals occasionally feature a bit of a British tinge when they perform music that was clearly composed under the influence of British hard rock, heavy metal, punk, etc. This kind of thing can even manifest in instrumental performance as well, albeit in a vastly different, more abstract way--while music can't necessarily sound British in terms of an accent, it can bear a distinctively British sound. The Beatles provide great examples of accents varying to suit whatever style of music they were adopting: their rawer, more American-sounding rock and roll songs feature vocals with a more American accent, while their super British psych period sees them really allowing their native accents to shine (compare "I Saw Her Standing There" to "Eleanor Rigby"). Mick Jagger and Keith Richards routinely affect American accents when performing music that bears obvious influence from American country and blues, not to mention rock and roll (check out "Sweet Virginia"). To me, the explanation offered in this video is more of a non-musician's explanation, although it is an interesting consideration.
But Paul McCartney has never sounded anything but Scouse i.e form Liverpool England so your argument falls down at the first hurdle.....?
Indeed; even when blatantly imitating Little Richard, he never loses his Liverpool accent.
yes, he is talking shit...and if he believes the shit he is talking he is really dumb.
British popular musicians were emulating the records they heard from America, Most American English speakers pronounce the words as you'd expect by looking at how the phonetics are supposed to work , Farmer sounds like Fairmer and even a word like Go sounds like Guy when some british people say it, the word Okay? Fuck that it's Ikay somehow , it even depends on the region of Britian they're from, it doesn't make any sense to pronounce the words in a way which contradicts how they are phonetically supposed to sound but British people do it anyway, higher class English people are a little better and clearer and then you have the Scottish who make no sense at all even if they are Speaking English, (go easy on me my ancestor are English and Scottish)
Great video 👌
i was wondering about this exact thing the other day wow
Proof that the English are the ones with the accent.
Pink Floyd sounds very British almost all the time.
The only instance I can think of where that wasn't the case was Mason's line in One of These Days. Even then I'd have said Scottish or something, still not American
Dirty Woman, Learning to Fly, Comfortably Numb, Have A Cigar, Hey You... most Floyd songs I think of off the top of my head don't sound English at all.
@@BobPapadopoulos That doesn't mean they sound American. Actually American to me would be McFly
Especially Early Pink Floyd, like Piper at the Gates of Dawn and even earlier experimental songs like Arnold Layne. But you're right, Pink Floyd has been consistently English. The accent, references to English culture, etc.
I enjoy singing and I can easily hear different 'dialects' from singers even if they probably grew up as neighbors