It’s funny, because indie rock and pop punk singers in the US are often accused of feigning British accents, presumably owing to the huge influence that British musicians have had on those styles. It’s the same way that reggae singers from all different countries sound a bit Jamaican.
I remember being on a train in the Netherlands listening to a group of four girls sitting together talking and singing some American pop songs. They were talking in a mix of Dutch and English, with the typically heavy Dutch accent on the English parts, but when they were singing they sung with perfect American English. It was pretty fascinating to watch.
Interesting! Also, you reminded me of a time in the early 1990s when I took a cab in Amsterdam, and the only English words my driver spoke were "Lou Rawls". Despite our not having any common language, he left me without a doubt that he REALLY loved American Music.😊
That’s pretty normal tho. My girlfriend sounds like a native when she sings in French or Italian but has a very heavy accent when speaking those languages. You learn songs by imitating, like the video states, even more so when it’s a language foreign to you. And those very specific pronunciation skills don’t automatically translate to speech
I've thought about this for a long time, thanks for the great video! Shout out to Justine Frischmann of Elastica for always keeping her British accent in their songs. It gave them an awesome sound.
@someguy325es As a non-english native speaker, I can distinguish the difference between spoken British and American accents but I not when sung. I tried very hard to understand what Dave is saying except for pronunciation of some words, I cannot differentiate accents in British music.
Hozier is so interesting to listen to because he will lean more into an American drawl when singing a blues influenced song. Then, when going for a more folk sound, he seems to embrace more of his natural Irish accent. It’s very fun to listen to. 😊
@@ActuallyDoubleGuitarsAmericans still say they’re going to mass if they’re catholic. But church is a good umbrella term since there’s a million different variations of Christianity here.
It’s definitely a genre thing. For example, a lot of country singers don’t even have Southern accents, but the music starts and suddenly they have this extremely strong twang 😅
I sing a lot in lots of different styles, and it is really hard to sing country music without putting on a southern accent. I try to sing it in my normal accent (northern US) but it's almost impossible. The music and the accent just go together.
David Bowie used to sing with his natural soft London accent for his more thoughtful and poetic songs - 'The Bewlay Brothers' etc. - (a big influence on him was Anthony Newley, who always sang with a pronounced London accent), but he'd switch to an American accent - 'Young Americans' etc - for his rock/soul/pop songs. He'd flip his accent, depending on the genre he was using.
A great example of Bowie using a cockney accent is on tthe song Scary Monsters And Super Creeps, and that's definitely not one of his more thoughtful and poetic ones. He exagerates his own cockney accent to give the lyrics a more menacing feel. "She 'ad an 'orror of rooms...". I feel that there's almost an element of code switching over the years in Bowie's vocals and indeed his speaking voice, from the more camp or theatrical nasally voice he used in his more sexually ambiguos Ziggy Stardust days, to the deeper baritone he used a few years later to convey a sense of isolation. It's interesting watching interviews of him over the years where his accent changes depending on who he is being interviewed by and the period.
As an American, my ears perk up happily when you are doing your American imitation. It reminds me of when I said a couple of words in Japanese to my cat from many years past. He was adopted from a Japanese owner, and if I spoke to him in Japanese, he always looked at me like my IQ just jumped by 20.
Yes, English accents always make people sound and seem so much more intelligent. But as soon as someone starts talking with a twang, they just somehow seem intellectually deficient. 😂
@dirzygypsy Which English accents make people sound more intelligent exactly? Cockney? Brummie? Geordie? South London? Scouse? I don’t know about this one 😂
I remember listening to Sophie Ellis-Bexter's "Murder on the Dancefloor" where her British accent is so prevalent. Sounds great, and it was with that song that I realised how rare you can hear a British accent in pop.
By the time she released that song the UK had been through about 20 years of britpop, when British accents (estuary English: Blur, Manc: Oasis, Sheffield: Pulp, etc) became mainstream for the first time in decades, so it was pretty much the norm at the time.
It's actually interesting because it happens in French too, with most French Canadian singer like Céline Dion who sing with a metropolitan accent but talk with a strong québécois accent.
I was thinking the same thing. Daniel Belanger is another example. Although, once in a while if I listen to either of them, I hear the quebecois, especially Belanger.
Yes Celine is the best example The most wellknown francophone singer What is metropolitan accent? A normal france french? What about quebecois accent? Is it also different compared to canadian french?
@@harysviewty Maybe I should have said standard French accent for metropolitan. After all there are plenty of accent in the European part of France. Québéquois is in indeed French Canadian, since most French speaker in Canada are in the province of Québec. There are also probably different accent in Canada but they all sound the same to me, as a French person from the North-West of the country. I used Céline Dion as an example, but there are many Québéquois singers that are well-known in France such as Garou or Natasha St-Pierre, who also sing with a standard accent but talk with a strong accent. It happens also with Francophone from Africa or the Pacific, or even in France itself, as most French people from the South of the country have recognisable accents when talking but a standard one when singing, even if some sing with their accent. Francis Cabrel is a great example of both ; he began his music carrer with a standard accent when singing, but once he became famous, he switched to his regional accent. Today there are many more that sing with their accents like Kendji Girac. I hope it wasn't too long.
@@sego4125 I didn't understand anything of the French Canadian of my mother's (and her relatives when visiting), but she did have a sort of strong East Coast accent, not as strong as a New Yorker, though.
I completely have forgotten about this. I remember noticing this when I was a child in the 70s and early 80s and how surprised I was when I heard my favorite bands and artist speak for the first time and to hear their British, Irish and Australian accent… I was surprised because they didn’t speak like the way they sang. I’m glad you brought this up.
also cool when you realise what genre is generally in your accent, here in Australia, recently indie rock has become big with Aussie artists and it feels like our accent suits that genre better. Same thing with Geordie and other english accents with punk rock
It’s also worth noting that the vowels used in American music are easier to align the first resonance and second resonance in the vocal tract (especially in higher notes)
@@cocdcyMost vocal coaches on YT have some information on it, "Choosing vowels/consonants" as some put it. There are certain vowels that are difficult to actually articulate when you're belting, screaming, using head voice/falsetto, etc. For note I used to play rhythm in a band and had to learn how to do backup vocals, I knew better than to just start screaming 'til it worked, so I have some years of being scolded by an expert, but am by no means one. A big part of why the accent changes has to do with the genre of music as well, but I imagine phunkykelpie is right about certain vowels aligning with first/second resonance, I'm just nowhere near technical enough to put it in any professional terms and was taught how things 'feel' and 'sound', but not necessarily why they do. In simple terms "Sometimes it's not possible to get the right sound when using certain consonants and vowels, it's easier than singing in your normal accent and it just sounds better, but what type of accent varies drastically from genre to genre, and even song to song in a genre."
A fancy interpretation. There are plenty of British songs sung with British accents. The real reason is that rock is American music and the Brits are imitating American accents.
@@johnkrieger185 i think it's a little deeper than simply imitation.. i've observed that non-americans (and not british) w/ heavy accents sound much closer to american-english when singing (just singing not a public performance). it's a fascinating phenomenon
@@Neophlegmit's not necessarily the accent that's different, but I do think that a lot of German mainstream pop is modeled after American pop nowadays - with a dash of German Schlager influence. Shallow lyrics and the melodies all sound the same. Painful to listen to imo.
@@CurtOntheRadio Maybe he means the letter r after vowels. In Scotland we say centre as centerr, close to how we see it spelled. Whereas someone from England outside west country sounds to us like they are saying centah. Checked out rhotic accents on wikipedia. Rs historically were pronounced in England but then got dropped in sometime around 19th century,
I was told years ago that accents “disappear” when singing, but now that I know that everyone has an accent, so singing is unlikely to sound accent-less to me unless it’s actually an American accent, I realized this had to be a lie. I’m glad someone made a video about this because it always bothered me.
“Accents disappear while singing” is very easily disproven by listening to a lot of country music, where Texan and southern accents often blast through even in songs that aren’t “talky” at all. I’d reccomend “I’m going under (getting over you)” as an example, it’s very much a song being sung but the singer’s accent is super strong and obvious
@@thatonehumanoid7756 Often it depends on the style of the song. For example, listen to the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" from "Let it Bleed". That would be ridiculous with a Cockney accent.
This applies to every language. A swedish popstar might have the thickest Scania accent but then go on to sing in "general Swedish". I remember hearing Lilly Allen for the first time and that she stood out to me even though I normally don't listen to that kind of music, it was because she actually retains her spoken accent while singing.
It's important to note that the accent one uses when singing really depends on the song's genre. 80s New Wave was essentially a British genre, so most of the songs churned out from within that genre had British accents. Listen to Depeche Mode, the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Modern English, etc... They use British accents. In Cebu and other Cebuano-speaking areas in the Philippines, there was a bit of a counterculture against Manila-dominated pop which was largely American-influenced and it was 80s New Wave - particularly British New Wave - that dominated the airwaves in such areas and struck a chord with the teenagers of the late 80s and 90s. One band from Cebu City - Sheila and the Insects - was heavily- influenced by 80s New Wave and so their songs sound very British (some friends say "Cure-like") as does their lead vocalist Orven Enoveso's accent when singing their own songs. (his wife was one of my neighbors within our small middle class gated community back in high school in the late 80s) It's always about the genre. Imagine Irish folk music (jigs, reels, etc) sung with an American or British accent. The only acceptable accent for such a genre would be an Irish one.
I agree and would give the closely related example of post-punk (ex. Talking Heads) and post-punk revival (ex. The Strokes) -- both from New York City, both emulating a sound that emerged from the UK, so they sing like it.
OrionPD, yes. Agreed. I suspect it's the contemporary British singers singing with an American accent but not the previous, and glorious, generation of artists. And by the way always and forever, thank you to Great Britain and the British people whose creativity, since the 1960s, has given the rest of the World hundreds of unique bands and music of unparalleled beauty, quirkiness and atmosphere. What would our lives have been without British bands? Thank you from Palermo, Sicily, to Cocteau Twins, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Discharge, Lush, Wire, Colin Newman, Killing Joke, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Broadcast, The Smiths, Human League, Curve, Skunk Anansie, Genesis, Steve Hackett, Boards Of Canada, Adam & The Ants, Public Image Limited, Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole & The Commotion, The The, Napalm Death, Cranes, Cardiacs, Led Zeppelin, Yazoo, Iron Maiden, Police, Blur, Fall, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Jamiroquai, Seal, Slowdive, Clash, Madness, The Beatles, Cure, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Goldfrapp, Dubstar, Charlatans, Ride, Heaven 17, Judas Priest, Marillion, The Buggles, Throbbing Gristle, Japan, Nick Drake, This Mortal Coil, Pet Shop Boys, Cardiacs, Damned, Dire Straits, Echobelly, Teardrop Explodes, Carcass, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Thrilled Skinny, Dead Or Alive, Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, XTC, The Streets, Pretenders, The Queen, Lily Allen, Tears For Fears, Supertramp, The Kooks, Duran Duran, Groove Armada, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, Saxon, Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack, Electric Light Orchestra, The Who, Inspiral Carpets, The Wedding Presents, Kate Bush, Placebo, The Rolling Stones, Housemartins, Visage, Culture Club, Expelled, The Jam, P.J. Harvey, Gary Numan, Howard Jones, Suede, Everything But The Girl, Roxy Music, Thrilled Skinny, Freur, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 10cc, Ladytron, Japan, Morcheeba, Helen Love, Spiritualized, Loop, Th' Faith Healers, Mark Ronson, Pretenders, Bauhaus, Kate Nash, Lotus Eaters, Black Sabbath, Oasis, The Sundays, All Saints, Portishead, Verve, Exploited, David Bowie, Talk Talk, Bauhaus, Elastica, Hey Elastica!, David Gray, Joe Jackson, Nick Kershaw, Spandau Ballet, Supergrass, The Korgis, Badly Drawn Boy, Tricky, Pale Saints, The Creatures, Bronski Beat, Fine Young Cannibals, Madness, Extreme Noise Terror, Stranglers, Stereolab, Keane, Motorhead...
My favorite 80s New Wave music is from Germany, and it started in the late 70s. I think a lot of British bands were influenced by German music at that time.
I worked in a linguistics lab in Canada briefly, and they wanted to do a study on Canadian accent in singing. Being a singer from Canada, they recruited me as a pilot subject (I didn't know specifically what they were looking for at the time). They had re-written the lyrics to Can You Feel the Love Tonight to include as many contexts as possible where Canadian raising would be applied - and I didn't raise a single one of them. At first I blamed my English parents, thinking my accent was probably not typically Canadian - but then I realized that deep down, I *knew* I was singing a Disney song, and I had imitated an American accent. I don't know if they were ever able to get that study off the ground XD
I just sang (to myself) about of "House of the Rising Sun" (yes, sung by an English band). No Canadian Rising there. It sounds weird when singing it the way I would say "house". I guess we go for imitation when singing, at least somewhat
I've been fascinated to see children here in New Zealand adopting American accents when playing make-believe. They clearly associate it with fiction and fantasy thanks to things like TV and video games, and all things Disney.
@@thromboid American kids do that and it's easy for us to forget that people in other countries view our accents the same way we view theirs. I think that's where the view of all of you "dropping/removing your accent" comes from. We actually say that for anyone with a strong regional accent as well though.
~ This was awesome, Dave. As a Black American, born and raised in the South, a polyglot, as well as a singer-songwriter, I can’t find a flaw anywhere in this assessment. As a matter of fact, when people pronounce my name, particularly because I am from the Southern culture, I prefer it without - what I typically describe as - the “hard Rs”. … loved this.
The "losing" the accent reminds me of an interview with Hugh Laurie, in Actor's Corner I think. He mentioned how USAmericans were shocked that he is British, and would congratulate him on losing the accent. And he said, miffed: "I don't lose the accent, I put one on!"
A good example of people singing American songs in their local accent is in the film The Commitments, where the backing singers are singing in Mustang Sally, "Roide, Sally, Roide," in their strong Dublin accents. Until the lead singer admonishes them of course, and tells them to sing in American.
Vowel modification is a tactic often used by singers/singing teachers to enable easier transitions through the vocal range. Some vowel ‘placements’ are easier to product through different areas of the voice. For example a hard EE will tend to pull the larynx up which is generally to be avoided so will be substituted with a softer sound to keep the larynx more neutral. As an Aussie myself that is a hard lesson but has been very successful in helping increase my range
I saw something a while back about Australian opera singers performing a modern opera set in Australia and having to learn to sing in their own accents.
Yes I was thinking this the whole way through. Those EE sounds are hard to sing and sustain! I learnt this from vocal coaches on UA-cam and it makes singing so much more pleasant when you're not straining on some sounds.
Hi Dave, thanks for another informative video! As an English teacher teaching in Spain I've noticed that my students can effect perfect 'American' accents when singing but still struggle in other areas of speech and I've always been fascinated by it. I'll certainly be using this video in future classes and sharing this video with other teachers! Keep up the great content
I don't know if you'll see this, but you'll appreciate it: I'm from Montana and lived in a mostly Spanish speaking neighborhood in DC. I wanted to be able to understand what people were saying & sass the dudes harassing me. I knew my Spanish teacher had a different accent than I'd heard growing up around Texas Mexican folks, but didn't think much of it. She was from SEVILLE. So I started sassing the fellas (the harassment turned out to just be saying I was pretty, untrue but harmless) with A LISP...the drunk dudes fell over laughing and couldn't control themselves 😂😂😂
I'm an American, and I sing in an Episcopal (Anglican) church, where most of our music is from the Anglican choral tradition. A friend asked me why we change our accents when we sing, saying it sounds affected. This video gives me a great response to questions like that, even though it's in the opposite direction! The pronunciation changes the musical style, and music just sounds better with the pronunciation that the composer imagined.
Thanks. Good observation. My church is Eastern Orthodox, and it reminds me of how some people say eether and neether, and some say eigh-ther and nigh-ther (latter for me, but I don’t know if I’ve always said them that way or if it was because I took German in school-learned basically no German except for…songs 😆), but for Communion we recite a prayer once, and sing it once with nigh-ther. m.ua-cam.com/video/J5D4d26iUCo/v-deo.html “Of Your Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of Your Mysteries to Your enemies, neither like Judas will I give You a kiss; but like the thief will I confess You: Remember me, O Lord, when You come in Your Kingdom.” (…i.e., at the Second Coming, i.e. on Judgement Day.) Haven’t noticed if anyone switches between e sound and i sound between the 2, if we all say it with the i sound even in ordinary speech, or what, but apparently the e sound is the typical one in America, while I think it would sound strange with the e sound in the hymn. And one of my daughters, at first 2, now 3, says it with the e sound at home and I wonder where it came to her from. Unlike a lot of others, she doesn’t watch much Peppa Pig, not getting any British accent. 😆 I just looked up the origin of “either”: æghwæþer, pronunciation, /ˈæːjˌxwæ.θer/, and the “æːj” is the i sound, since it is here: www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=1111 . Supposedly America has the original pronunciation of words, never changed, but here it DID! 😅 Can’t think of any other examples in church, and not sure what our pronunciation means about language. We have a couple hymns partly in Old Church Slavonic, and have a lot of Greek words incorporated the way “hallelujah”, “hosanna”, and “amen” became incorporated. (Absolutely “ah-men”. “Ay-men”? 😬😳 No way. 😄) The church is a melting pot. 🙂🤷♀️ In the OCA, which is Russian, but it was founded as Macedonian and Bulgarian; there are a few Russians, and Ukrainians. The priest is Ukrainian-English-Canadian. Lots of Macedonians, Ethiopians, and miscellaneous Americans. We’re in northeastern Indiana. I’m from northeast Ohio between the Cleveland accent and Appalachian accent. My husband is from Northeast Ohio close to the Pittsburgh accent. Here’s an example from out of church: people changed “crayfish” to “crawfish”. But it went from gerbhitaz, to grobidos, to krabitaz, to krebitja, to crevice, to crayfish, to (in some places) crawfish. But “craw” is “mouth” and the “cray” has the “crab” meaning. And of course it’s not a fish, so the “vice” ending is the last one not changed into a wrong word. So “crayfish” (what I say) is less incorrect than “crawfish”, but (oops 😅) “crevice” is what it should be. The ay sound is original. From ay to ah to ay to ah.
A lot of dropping the R comes in musical training--in choirs we were told to minimize certain sounds to make the words more open, helping blend. Most of the music our choirs were doing involved tones that wanted vowels more forward and open, decreased sibilants, moderated plosives, etc. And if you did the opposite, smiling through your ee's and prolonging the Rs you got a much more "country" sound.
I keep thinking about Gerard Way and how he would overemphasize his Rs. It sounded so unusual so it ended up being really distinctive. Ghost of You immediately comes to mind.
My voice and choir professor in college would immediately stop the song if someone put too much R in their pronunciation. He said it was too harsh and grinding, and it sounded like we were angry and about to start swearing. That's one of the biggest lessons I held on to after his classes, and it's something I still notice 25+ years later. In general, I love REO Speedwagon and their music, but "Keep On Loving You" absolutely grinds my gears every time I listen to it ... "When I said that I love you / I meant that I love you foreverrrrrrrrrrrr ..." AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!! 🤬
American here. 7th grade was the first year that we had school choir in my district. Early on, we got a lesson from our choir teacher regarding dropping the R's. One of my classmates likened it to a British accent. This video caught my attention because I always think about that lesson when I hear a singer stress the R sound. I never thought about any of the singers mentioned in this video sounding American or singing in an American accent.
Another UA-camr made a video discussing the history behind American regional accents, and he shows that when you speed up some of our American dialects, you will hear a regional accent from the place where the population emigrated from. So, New Jersey and New York have a lot of Irish and Italian, and the South has a lot of English accents.
I don't really care where, but I love regional accents. Something when you hear a local pronounce a local town in a way you'd never guess is great. Can't hide in a small town world.
@@kthp2343 I’m not 100% certain if these are the videos to which they were referring to, but Erik Singer does a great 3 part series called “Accent Experts Gives Tour of U.S. Accents” on WIRED’s UA-cam channel. In 3 parts, he breaks down, demonstrates, and has experts assist on the historical basis of how so many different accents formed throughout history, and continue to do so. I’m fairly certain they were referring to his series, as it’s excellently done!
I've heard a lot of UA-camrs talking about this issue from the point of view of cultural crossover, but you're the first one who I've heard mention vowel modulation, and it's benefits. As a lifelong singer, I would just like to say thank you. :D
I think this is really well illustrated when you think about other genres of music. It takes active concentration to sing an Irish folk song and resist the urge to slip into a hokey cod-Irish brogue, or likewise to sing a sea shanty and not adopt a vaguely West-Country piratical sort of an accent, or when people sing classical choral music, they adopt very conservative RP like pronunciation.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I don't know much about singing. But I can certainly educate you about accents. Nowadays most whites kids in London speak English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect which is very different from the anglo saxon dialect of English which is spoken in this t.v programme by this presenter. In the early 2000's, young white kids on council estates in London became JAMAICANISED. This is when they starting speaking with English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect. For example, Essex county is the only place in Britain where the cockney dialect/and or accent is still spoken.
@@shaunigothictv1003🚨🚨Racist alert🚨🚨 Essex people speak estuary, not cockney. Cockneys have all moved up north and now spend their time telling everyone about how much better "Landon" is, or talking about the Kray twins, who they all knew personally of course.. The English language has constantly changed, unless thees int' Yorkshire.
This is so enlightening! I'd always wondered why it was hard to determine people's nationality when they were singing, not realizing that it's because people often use American pronunciations in songs.
I think if you ask any American they'll tell you what they think about non-Southern singers putting on a US southern accent to sing country music. It's endemic to the genre.
@@jamesdoyle2769 Not always. Listen to the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" from "Let it Bleed". That would be ridiculous with anything but a Southern/Western accent. By the way, that was closer to the original way that "Honkey Tonk Women" was envisioned.
@@946towguy2i had no idea! everytime i listen to bad moon rising i like to sing and exaggerate the accent bc with the way they say "bound to take your life" i thought surely some of them are from a more rural state.
One thing I love about Biffy Clyro is that the singer has always kept his Scottish pronunciation. It adds so much more character to the music and I wish more brits did the same!
Man. They used to be one of my favourite bands and that sort of explains why! I mean, I always knew they were Scottish and Simon has an accent but I never really made the connection. It just gives them a different sound.
this is so true, i love languages and i've learned songs in punjabi, arabic, romanian, portuguese, hawaiian, french, and italian and know the lyrics by heart. these are all languages i dont speak at all, and can get frustrated easily trying to speak them, but somehow, as you say, in music, it's just so much easier. what a great video on a wonderfully fascinating subject. well done
That is extremely impressive. I already speak English and I happen to love rock so that's never happened to me. Although, I do like trying to sing in Spanish some.
I remember asking British people when I studied abroad why British musicians often sound American when they sing. They pretended it wasn’t a thing. I knew that was rubbish!
I wondered the same thing about the Beatles when I was a little kid. Why do they have such strong English accents when they speak, but not when they sing?
@@shimmerbay The answer is simple: pop, rock, soul, rap, jazz - every form of modern music came from the US. The Brits and everyone else found it all so cool and just copied, because they wanted to be cool too. To sing in a British accent is now as awkward as if James Bond or Downton Abbey were to be acted in an American accent!
The Southern American accent has been very prevalent in singers from around the world - just listen to Elton John, Michael Hutchence (INXS), Mick Hucknall (Simply Red), Mick Jagger, Jay Kay (Jamiroquai).
"In Watermelon Sugar" was a novel by Richard Brautigan, an American author, that was published in 1968. So, Harry Styles was rather late to the board. Also, you can make watermelon syrup or sugar. If the juice has sugar in it, it can be condensed to syrup, and if it can be condensed to syrup, you can make sugar from it. Maple syrup is made from maple tree sap in the spring, and that sap is not remotely as sweet as watermelons are. It tastes pretty much like faintly sweet water.
Changing pronunciation when singing also applies to classical as well as rock/pop/jazz etc. Flat vowels or open ‘ahh’ type vowels are often easier to express in than typical diphthong English vowels. I have often been directed by a choir master or a producer to alter pronunciation or to leave off an ending consonant because it sounds better or lends itself better to musical or dynamic expression, rather than to sound American for its own sake.
Exactly! There may be nothing worse than a 50+ member chorus trying to simultaneously sing an 'r' or 's' sound! It's either 'start your engines' or 'you've got a leaky tire'
Yes I was thinking about that during the video too - the examples of non-rhotic pronunciation he used immediately pinged to me as the classic open sound for projection that I was taught by my singing teacher and choir masters. AS someone with short English vowels it always grated to be force to sing with long vowels, but I understand how it improves the tone of the sound.
Yes, singing almost necessitates certain vowel modifications. If I sang exactly the same way I talk (I have a standard American accent), it wouldn't sound very good either
Thinking the same. Particularly with Barbara Streisand example with the word "somewhere". You wouldn't want to put a hard "r" on a note higher in the range and/or for a sustained note. Sometimes it also has to do with blending phrasing. For example, if the song has more legato features, you wouldn't want to be fully pronouncing hard consonants such as "t", "p", "d", etc.
I (American) was quite involved with classical choral singing as a teenager and young adult. We were encouraged to sing in certain ways (non-rhotic, certain styles of vowels, etc.) to get the classical sound. I seemed have ended up with some kind of Brit speaking accent at times. I met some new coworkers at a job meeting and I was greeted by an enthused UK lady who thought that she had found a kindred Brit in me. It was a bit embarrassing because I didn't want to be pegged as someone affecting a posh to Americans accent.
@ 3:18 As a boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, I refused to believe that the Beatles were English and not American. I would hear them singing in what sounded like American accents. It wasn't until my older sister took me to see "Hard Days Night" that I was convinced otherwise.
For the Irish fans out there, I’ve been listening to a lot of the cranberries lately, that Dolores O’Riordan does not cover up her Irish roots in any sense. I’m a music teacher and my vocal students here in the US often ask me why she sings so “weird,” and with all the pride and respect I can muster for a culture that isn’t my own, I say “she’s not being weird. She’s being herself. That’s something we can all get better at and learn from them, especially in a context where it’s so rare to hear people not change their accent to sing.” Another great example is the internationally successful band “CAN” made up of Germans who sing in English, but sound as “foreign” to my American ears as any singer that sings in their native language. Not everyone adopts an American accent, it’s just rare to find those who dont
Horslips and The Corrs always sound American to me. Out local expats here in So Cal, The Young Dubliners, definitely sound Irish. The modern Irish accent is closer to the way we speak in California than British speech patterns. Beastie Boys leaned toward the U.S. east coast sound without quite going full Brooklynese.
The English punk bands of the 1970s all sang with very pronounced English accents. I think they deliberately did so, to distance themselves from English bands who came before them, like the Rolling Stones, who sang with American accents. It was all to do with being authentic, I suppose. Also, the north of Ireland punk bands from the 70s, like Stiff Little Fingers, and the Undertones, sang in very pronounced north of Ireland accents.
The people who say her singing is weird, I wonder if they’ve only ever heard her sing the Zombies song, contrasted with Let it Linger in which her voice is very beautiful.
As The Beatles progressed they dropped the American accents in some of their songs. The Kinks used a British/ American mix in their songs . When you move on to the 70’s Bowie and Pink Floyd would often sing with British accents.
The first time I heard Amy Winehouse, I thought she was a southern African American singer, not a wee lass from London. Also a reason I enjoy the Proclaimers as a band is how they fully retained their Leith accent while singing
I find both approaches can work. Amy Winehouse made that Blues accent her own, and artists like the Pretenders make their accent an integral part of their music.
Thing about Amy is that once I knew she was English, I could notice it immediately (In the song "You know I'm no good" she even says "lickle" instead of "little" in one of the verses). On "Rehab" she sounds very Southern AAVE influenced, but on most of her other work, I think she does generally sound pretty English.
Thanks for this explanation, it totally makes sense to me now! I always wondered why British singers sounded American when singing, not realizing it was basically the genre they were singing lol. Like someone else commented, I couldn't imagine singing an Irish song in my southern American accent 😂
A nice example of this is rap. In the past, brits have tended to affect an American accent when rapping. However, modern grime artists now use their native MLE. I think this is because grime is an English invention, with, if anything, a Caribbean influence. I believe this to be true but I don’t have enough evidence to assert it as a fact. Another great video Dave, cheers👍🏻
Grime dates back to at least 2010, if not earlier, and is not just explicitly Anglo-Carribean in its linguistic accents but also its music: it builds on British styles of music like Garage (themselves Anglo-Carribean constructions), and thus always had a much faster tempo than characteristic of rap generally (180bpm vs 120bpm) - contrast any old Skepta track with a Giggs song to see this in action.
not only that but jungle dnb and garage emcees had been 'rapping' in their native accents with that same massive caribbean influence long before the split between garage and grime in around 02/03
@@amanwithaplaninavan Indeed, I didn't want to get too deep in to it. I think it's because so many MCs started out in the rave, using their own accents was natural
Some early (i.e. 1990's) artists in the UK hiphop scene did affect Americanised accents, but the hardcore rave / jungle MCs definitely used MLE, and those MCs and Jungle music was hugely influential on other UK based genres that came after it, directly and indirectly.....UKG, Grime, Dubstep, and more tangentially Drill (which was hugely influenced by Grime).
My native language is German, but I grew up in Canada. In my early 20's I moved to London for work and grew accustomed to British accents. Then I visited Germany for a few days. On my way back to London on the hovercraft I was convinced that everyone around me was speaking German and it wasn't until I focused on an individual conversation that I realized that everyone was actually speaking English. The inflections and rhythms were exactly the same.
@@Matthew_Ssali Actually, only 30% of the words in English can be traced to Germanic origin, and around 50% of the words can be traced to Italic origin, where Latin developed from, which also means French.
Alison Moyet (back in the 80s) also sounded *very* distinct for the fact that she sung in an English accent. You would know instantly that she was English (from the south even) which even at the time was quite striking.
Great video as usual, Dave! As a singer and amateur linguist myself, happening to be American, I appreciate how you mention a context-dependent “pull” in either direction - toward or away from rhotics. Singing in a paid choir in college patterned on the Oxbridge tradition, on the clock I may as well have been in England all the time, and not always consciously. I find this the most in artists who are really “out of place” for the style of music they make. I’d be interested to know what you thought of the vocalist for a very underground group called For Against, who made extremely British-sounding post-punk in the 80s despite hailing from Lincoln, Nebraska. Their songs are a real trip for a linguist.
I sing in choirs in Montreal but was taught to sing in a similar Oxbridgey style. One of my choirs is an amateur choir, totally bilingual in membership. It leads to some fun moments for the native Francophones when we have, say, an Anglican Christmas carol in our repertoire, and just as much amusement for the native Anglos like myself when we have a well-known song in French, and we shoot for more of a colloquial style. Choir is a great place to experience a little bit of linguistic diversity :)
Really interesting! As a choral singer (well former, but I'd like to get into it again soon!) from London UK I really enjoy listening to many choirs on UA-cam, and so many great American choirs absolutely ace the music itself but don't quite sound like the here, though its clear they are trying to get as close as possible haha! No hate to them, but I find the Mormon Tabernacle Choir videos on UA-cam pretty unwatchable due to the pretty extreme pronunciation of 'r' at the ends of words which to my British ears, really ruins masterpieces like Handel Messiah etc.
The reason consonants like R are dropped when singing is simply because it is far more musical to sustain a vowel sound over several beats than a consonant (unless you're Sinatra, who liked to sustain an N consonant). That's why Italian is the language of opera. Lots of vowels, particularly at the end of words. Also, when you hold a vowel over several beats you tend to use a purer form of the vowel- dipthongs would sound really silly if sung. Using the purer form "normalizes" the sound so Brits and Yanks sound more alike.
Try listening to Finnish songs. They definitely do not (to quote the Proclaimers) ‘throw the R away’. OK it doesn’t last for several beats, but it’s definitely long 😄. It’d be difficult to sing a love song without the R mind, because the L word begins with R.
I’m a music teacher and I was just having a very similar conversation to this with my students the other day. I hypothesize that the vowels necessary to project volume when singing are not the same as the vows we would use when we are speaking. My go to example is at the Apex of the melody in the American national anthem “land of the free“ sounding something more like “fray” because that produces a wider mouth shape that is more conductive to chest voice than the narrow “ee“Vowel that requires a much more closed oral posture. It’s just one example but I do think it is indicative of larger trends. I have found studying accents to be an under utilized skill for vocalists that ought to be A bigger part of vocal coaching discipline. There is an over emphasis on diction particularly amongst theater trained singers where the lyrics of the song also have to function as dialogue, and this has led me to encounter many students over pronounce their lyrics when singing Songs by artists like Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin and it just doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the performance
This was something i noticed when watching "Never Enough" being sung on foreign versions of The Voice. Everyone copied Loren Allred's "to MAAAAAAAAY" on the big note in the chorus except one classically trained singer who had enough welly in his voice to belt out "to MEEEEEEEEE" correctly but it sounded strange. I suppose singing well known songs is really a case of monkey see, monkey do.
Funny that people from Nassau county in Long Island NY often pronounce words very similarly to this presenter. I remember my uncle pronouncing "bottle" when he'd ask for a bottle of beer with nearly silent 't's.'
Thanks for another great video! It’s not only in English. Spanish songs are pronounced in the accent of Puerto Rico (a US territory which gave birth to many Latin pop stars). A notable feature is s-dropping at the end, and is now followed by Latin singers all across the world, eg Colombia and even Spain! There’s something to be said about American cultural hegemony.
That's absolutely wrong. On one hand, many many many accents in Spanish drop the s (just like the Brits drop the r) On the other hand, argentinean rock is sung with argentinean accent, spanish pop with spanish accent, mexican rancheras with mexican accent and chilean or peruvian folk with their corresponding accents. It is only reggaeton that is sung with puerto rican accent.
I'm a rock singer in Belgium and I write all my songs in English. When I sing them I use a broadly American accent. It's simply down to: what are your favourite singers and songwriters. I love a bunch of British bands but almost all of them sing in an American accent (as do the American artists I love, luckily).
Same goes for Céline Dion and lots of singers from Québec, they sing using a Parisian french accent and Céline Dion once said she couldn't sing with a Québec accent
I think what you're interpreting as 'accent' is considered in terms of 'timbre' by singers. Vowel and consonant sounds are chosen to fit the sound they want for the music. Classical singers choose differently than pop, and so on. So singing in a genre, pursuing the sound of that sort of music, will mean choosing certain sets of vowels and consonants, resulting in an apparent 'accent'.
I think this is right. Take Coldplay and Elbow as examples from a similar genre. Chris Martin can’t produce the timbre he wants in his native RP accent so he sings with an American accent. Whereas Guy Garvey is from Lancashire and naturally has the short vowel sounds required, so he’s able to retain his native accent when singing.
Timbre has absolutely nothing to do with RHoticism and vowel manipulation. TImbre is ONLY applicable to the particular frequency and melding of tones in any given voice. VOice print analysis has a great deal to do with TImbre
The role of music, and more broadly, poetry, in adopting or dropping accents is really interesting. I’m from Philadelphia and have a pretty typically White Philadelphian accent, which is one of the more complicated accents in American English I’m told. I still remember as a small child reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and wondering why Dr. Seuss sometimes rhymed certain words that don’t rhyme in my accent. That was when my mom suggested it might be a slant rhyme. I don’t know if she said slant rhyme specifically, but she did say something like, “In poetry people rhyme words that don’t perfectly rhyme in real life.” The vowel we use for sad and had are different than the vowel we use for bad, mad, glad. “Why are they glad and sad and mad and bad? I don’t know, go ask your dad” does not rhyme in Philadelphia English.
This is such a great comment. If anyone is interested in this accent phenomenon, it’s called æ raising / æ tensing, and it’s so cool in that it is such a great way of distinguishing where someone is from sometimes. Here’s the Wikipedia page for it, and you’ll notice regional divisions on the chart, such as for Philadelphia and New York: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki//%C3%A6/_raising
This also explains why some British poetry doesn’t rhyme to Canadians. And since language is always changing, older poems tend to lose some of their rhyme-ability. It puzzled me as a kid
From Philly here and I knew some of us use different vowels for that 'a'. I notice it with 'gas' at times: some of us say 'gas' (or 'gahs') and others 'geeas' (g is hard in all instances there like the word geese)
it was scrubbed here, and i love it so much. black beauty in the history of blues to rock, to disco and soul, to roll, and now r and b, pop The music truthfully is imbued in black culture and the manipulation of the English language. Breaking language to give it more meaning is natural to AAVE and is an intrinsic tool in singing. Its poetic and beautiful so no surprise by the parallels.
When I took singing lessons I was taught to use these "wider", american vowel sounds in order to open up the mouth more to create more space and project better, and I find it helps better with breath support too. I had never thought there was a reason other than that why people sing that way. I wonder how the two of these factors interact/ are related.
I took the Mickey out of my son (from West Yorkshire) singing a word in one of his songs ('clearly') as if he was Scottish. He answered that it was impossible to sing it in Yorkshire within the song. I think US English vowels are just easier to drag out and fit to the music inany cases
@@moladiver6817 it's funny, cos John Lennon, when asked why they sang in American accents, said something to the effect of "we aren't, we're singing in Liverpool accents" What's very interesting is that people from Liverpool of the beatles generation speak in a _COMPLETELY_ different accent to modern people from Liverpool. Like, it is as different as the California American accent is from the posh London received pronunciation accent. You may only notice it if you live in Liverpool for a while, which I have, I moved here after growing up near London, because I went here for university and then just never left, it's the greatest city in the world IMO. But yeah all you have to do is listen to, say, Paul McCartney speaking, and then listen to what a modern scouse accent sounds like. Or compare any of the beatles accents to modern scouse. There is nothing in common, it's crazy. Like, I don't know how that's actually even possible. In half a century, the accents from an entire city have completely changed as to be unrecognisable. Although mind you, some people thought John and Paul talked weird for scousers even back then, because they were particularly posh with posh upbringings who were well off and went to art school, and so spoke differently to working class scousers. But then even George and Ringo, who grew up working class, also sound completely different to modern scouse. And living in the city and talking to older people, older scousers really do sound very very different to younger ones. I don't know if it's happened anywhere else in the UK. Or even the world for that matter. I didn't know accents could change so much so quickly, until I moved here after already being a huge beatles fan for years, and for the first time realised that modern scousers sound absolutely nothing like the beatles, not even remotely. I'm sure there's some great videos on UA-cam about this explaining it better than I can, if you search for something like "why do modern people from Liverpool have different accents to the beatles". Also another very weird quirk about scouse accents that I've never heard of existing in literally any other accent, is that men and women pronounce words VERY differently. It's not all words. But I know there are videos about this on UA-cam because I watched one with an academic talking about scouse accents years ago and that's how I learned this, because I never would have noticed otherwise, because I'm not very observant. But yeah you take a word like "book", and one gender will pronounce it like "buke" and the other like "buuk". There are exceptions, like for example some gay men often pronounce it the "female" way (and there's nothing wrong with that of course, just pointing it out as an example). But yeah. I don't know what non-binary people do, because there's always exceptions anyway even in straight, cisgender people, it's not some kind of hard and fast rule, and speaking in one way or the other doesn't "prove" that they're that gender. It made me almost want to go back to university and get another degree, in the science and study of accents, because as you can see there's so much that can be researched about it, so much to talk about, it's absolutely fascinating. And the science of it isn't settled by any means, because of the growth in the types of things I'm talking about such as gender, and how the accents of an entire city of people can completely 100% change to something entirely different over the course of only a single generation. I also think modern gen Z and gen alpha brits have developed a strange new accent of their own that I believe probably comes from consuming more American media than ever, and especially on the Internet with youtubers they watch. It's just a kind of accent I notice with every youngish British youtuber. They seem to sound very very similar to each other even when they're from completely different parts of the country. It's like an Internet accent. How cool is that, that an accent can develop like that in only a few decades? If you watch enough British youtubers, and pay attention, you'll start to notice it too, how they all speak in a certain way regardless of what part of the country they're from and their family background. So yeah the academic study of accents has never been fresher, really.
I've seen another video about this topic and it was said the American accent pronunciation is just easier to rhyme and sing too as well. It's not just a case of imitation.
I'm Scottish and most instances of Scottish accents in music, Gerry Cinnamon and the like, make me cringe into myself. Mostly because Gerry Cinnamon is shite, so I've trained myself to hate the accent in music as well.
Very interesting point made on how it's easier to imitate/change accents when singing vs speaking. Reminds me of how sometimes people with stutters find it easier to speak fluently when singing. I wonder if these are related in any way?
Uh please note that in places like Boston and New York City the natives neglect the "r" in words like "park", and so on. There are many accents in the USA alone. You can travel 100 miles from virtually any major city and encounter a slightly different accent.
When I was a kid, I was kind of surprised to learn that Elton John is from the UK because he always sounded quite American. However, I quite enjoy hearing someone's natural accent while they're singing. I like the Small Faces song "Lazy Sunday" because it's soooo cockney!
This is so interesting! For me, it explains why for some reason it's super easy for me to switch a Scottish accent when singing that 500 miles song but not so much when I'm trying to do a Scottish accent without any song. Also, that note that you had about using songs to improve our pronunciation in a target language was something I'd never thought of doing. Usually, I'd just listen to my favourite songs in my target language just for fun, but now I'd definitely keep in mind to sing along as well so that through the magic of music, I will somehow have acquired some understanding of the pronunciation of my target language
Thanks for your observations. I sang in a choir at grammar school. Our choirmistress was very particular about our pronunciation. We never did modern songs, so this wasn’t jarring at all. In my 40s I was asked to sing for a charity performance at my kids’ school - Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music. I’d never done a solo before and was very nervous. It went well though and I was asked to do more. At some point I realised that everything I sang was a bit clipped, too enunciated for the genre. It worked okay with Do Re Mi and with folk songs but with more ‘modern’ songs I sounded like a right stuffed shirt - Summer Holiday, Octopus’s Garden… I cringe to think about it now. 😂 We live and learn! Thanks for your observations.
I've long thought that one of the overarching reasons is that long notes in singing don't accommodate diphthongs very well, meaning that a singer will simplify it to a monophthong, just as is often done in speech in some US accents.
Morrissey does some very long diphthongs. "Your father cracks a joke (joooaaakkh) and in the usual way (wuuaaaaiiiy) empties (emptuueeiiis) the reooom" "And I just can't explaiiiiin / So I won't even tryyy to"
This video made me understand why my French teacher in high school devoted every single Friday to singing songs in French! It was very very fun and I did not mind at all, but I never knew exactly why she put on the music and handed out the lyric books she’d made and had us all sing along. Thank you for making it click, and for throwing me back to such fun memories.
It's interesting to hear the singing accent discussion from the linguist perspective, as a trained singer, as some of the things here are easily explained by how easy/hard it is to sing certain vowels/consonants. For example, 90% of Adele's choices are definitely to accomodate her style of singing. Hitting those big, high notes with such power requires very specific vowel choices. If she tried to sing that style (high belt) in her native accent, she just wouldn't be able to sing those things. The same can be said for many other accents around the world where the native sound just doesn't accomodate singing the high notes
I also think it’s a matter of vocal technique. Singing can literally only happen on vowels and voiced consonants, so singers often voice consonants where they otherwise wouldn’t to make singing easier (and more pleasant to listen to.) Which means it’s really hard to sing in any accent that heavily features t-glottalization and very easy to sing in an accent that heavily features flapping, simply for the reason that the voice is interrupted more often in the former.
Rock & Roll was I think done successfully in a Scottish accent (Alex Harvey) and a Manchester one (Mark E Smith, The Fall), but the convention is as you say to faithfully reproduce the American twang. Perhaps because all singers grew up mouthing the words along to American singers in the mirror. There might be something of an analogy from worldwide cinema goers in the 40s and 50s, as young people picked up expressions and mannerisms and fashion tips from golden-era Hollywood stars.
Sam Fender would be an interesting case study if you make another video on this topic. His biggest influence is Bruce Springsteen, but I think his Geordie accent is very prevalent. I’m thinking in ‘Seventeen Going Under’ where he sings ‘joker’ with the classic Geordie accent. But also, his accent is definitely less strong when he sings (or that’s how I perceive it) as when he speaks on stage (as someone not from the North East) I struggle to understand him sometimes, but completely understand all of his lyrics. He’d be a great singing accent case study! Great video
I remember the Fall of 1963, the Beatles were already being promoted in the US. The TV ads kept saying the "British are coming." They had a big promotion on TV before their 1964 US tour. When they got here, everyone expected something different. So, when they sounded much like an American band, people were asking about it. They needed someone like you to explain the reason why they sounded like an American band. Or, why they were so highly promoted when we already had American boy bands that would have loved that level of promotion.
That's interesting, I just realized it happens in other languages as well. I'm from southern Brazil and we pronounce hard Rs, but when singing, everyone I know will default to non-rhotic R's typical from Rio de Janeiro and Northeastern accents, where most of Brazilian popular music comes from
This is a very interesting video. I remember when I was a child in the US I discussed with my dad that many songs on the radio were sung with a Southern US accent.
I’ve always wondered about this but there are some songs where you can hear accents come out. Like the chorus of Ed Sheerans Perfect, specifically when he says grass. Interesting to listen to cover versions of it by Americans to see how they sing it haha. You can also hear his accent in Castle on the hill.
I can definitely hear Ed is a Brit especially in his slow songs. In Perfect he say DAHN Sing for dancing and DAWK for dark. Paul McCartney is another one where I feel his speaking accent comes through strongly.
Yes you have bands that still have their accents like Blurry and Oasis. But then there are American music groups who sound Brit-ish, like The Killers and Green Day.
I find it very interesting when listening to Dua Lipa's music. She sings in a very american accent (to my Brazilian ears), but it completely changes once she's rapping.
Kate Bush, Brian Eno, Ian Dury and so many others have managed to create pop music with their own accents, and I do feel an immediate respect when people dare to be themselves. An interesting Artist who lets her UK residency creep into her singing is Jesca Hoop, who has a lovely Californian accent with new hints of Manchester. All the best Lucas
I’m glad you mentioned the African American influence on singing pronunciation. I always heard AAVE influence in the typical singing accent, even in nonAAVE American accents
I am Scottish, but I certainly tend to use a more neutral accent subconsciously when I sing, I think it is imitation in a way! I imitated my parents and peers learning to speak, I imitate what I hear singing and because the American features are prevalent, I learned to sing in an accent. Actually when singing, I use sounds that I wouldn't in normal speech, where a song is sung with a non-American accent, I'd find myself imitating that too! It is a performance! I CAN sing with a Scottish accent, it would have to be a choice though. Although it is good for those Proclaimers songs and such!
The Twilight Sad are well worth checking out - the singer James maintains a strong Scottish accent and even their instrumentals invoke images of Scotland, well for me anyway. Simon Neil from Biffy admits himself that he used to sing in an American accent (probably down to the big influence of American acts) however you can definitely hear that he’s shaken that off to a degree in more recent releases.
You mentioned pop music but didn’t mention that Swedish accents actually impact late 90s/early 00s pop in particular and it’s because of who produced most of those songs. Trained singers also lose their regional accents because you’re trained to enunciate & project every syllable so you can be heard. It helps the music sound crisp & full-bodied. So while Broadway is in NYC, a city notoriously non-rhotic, most singers in most roles will be pronouncing their Rs.
Few extra bits to weight in as a vocalist who also has a VERY strong yorkshire accent. A key element of singing is choosing your key vowels correctly to make notes easier to sing or keep the tone consistent while also over-articulating a lot of sounds, particularly on higher notes because if I sing something say in the 5th octave in my natual accent, it would be incomprehensibe. The sounds need to be exaggerated a lot more which I think is why singing accents are is seen as more americanised since it overlaps a lot more with the ways to get a clearer singing tone for those higher areas where music has shifted to a lot over the past few years (think about how many high notes in songs you can think of verses people singing notable bass notes). Its what I love about singing a lot of british style rock & indie music since there is less of a focus on the belting and instead leaning into the accent to hammer home the message. Singing classics from artic monkeys, the courteeners, and so on are some of my favourite options since they allow me to overdo my own accent and its simply just good fun
Very good video! I had noticed on my own that people tend to sing (at least in English) with pretty much the same accent. I hadn't realized that it's more based on Southern US English. Occasionally, I hear people sing in their regional accent rather than following the general trend, and it's a bit jarring at first. But I like it once I get used to it.
I always wondered about the different pronunciation of "can't" and "can" in British (I'm American). I had this discussion with a British ex-boyfriend years ago about the song "Rock DJ" by Robbie Williams. There's a line "when you CAHN't get a girl but your best friend CAN," and I thought it was weird how can't was pronounced differently than can. It's interesting to hear more about the quirks of language. Fascinating video!
@@mattwilson50 Are you expecting most Americans to know Emmanuel Kant? Hah! I know that folks from Northern England say it differently than those down south (I can never remember which says it which way, though).
It's interesting cuz when I sing, as a singer and songwriter myself, I tend to sing by default in a Southern American accent (I am from Canada and have never been to the south) in imitation of the many southern folk, rock, and country singers I listen to and learn to play a lot. It is so default I have to consciously sing with my own accent a lot of the time. One of the things I noticed felt really strong when I started learning to sing in an Irish accent in Irish folk music, is that I actually pronounced the rhotics like an American/Irish person. Despite the fact that my native accent is rhotic. Something about the way I say the line "looked like a hundred guns fell on me" in my typical Zoomer Calgarian accent just doesn't hit as hard as Ian Noe's original vocals sung in a Kentucky accent.
Notably, Al Jourgenson, an American based in Chicago, started his career with Ministry singing with a fake British accent. Ministry at the time sounded like trendy British synth-pop and so he made his accent match it. He dropped the accent as the band evolved into an industrial-metal sound.
Well done though the two examples at the end, Springsteen and Streisand, sound to me as if they’re singing in their own accents, New Jersey and Brooklyn.
As a person born in London and having had a Brit accent til my teens and then having moved to the US and now having no trace of that accent I can say a couple things. When vowels are elongated they sound more American, hence the loss of accent. Also, hard R's help articulate words making them more rhythmic than soft R's. Also, there's the influence in rock and pop that stems from American blues and jazz.
@@kristinazubic9669 I actually moved from London to Hawaii when I was 7, then moved back from 12 to 13. I had an American accent when I moved back but it took me about 2 months to revert back to my native accent when I was 12. It definitely didn't happen consciously. Funny thing was, after about 6 months being back in London I talked to my cousins in Hawaii on the phone and to me they sounded like dumb southerners. The elongated vowels made them sound like they were mentally slow even though I knew that wasn't the case. I found it funny at the time, still do, especially since I have an American accent now.
It’s funny, because indie rock and pop punk singers in the US are often accused of feigning British accents, presumably owing to the huge influence that British musicians have had on those styles. It’s the same way that reggae singers from all different countries sound a bit Jamaican.
Exactly.
Good ol' Sting made a fine career out of pretending to be Jamaican.
No, Some just want to sound posh
Every time I do David Bowie at karaoke i end up doing a British accent without even meaning to!
this makes me think of phoebe bridgers when she sings "hey, why do you sing with an english accent?"
I remember being on a train in the Netherlands listening to a group of four girls sitting together talking and singing some American pop songs. They were talking in a mix of Dutch and English, with the typically heavy Dutch accent on the English parts, but when they were singing they sung with perfect American English. It was pretty fascinating to watch.
It sounds better. Full stop. Period. 😅
Interesting! Also, you reminded me of a time in the early 1990s when I took a cab in Amsterdam, and the only English words my driver spoke were "Lou Rawls". Despite our not having any common language, he left me without a doubt that he REALLY loved American Music.😊
That’s pretty normal tho. My girlfriend sounds like a native when she sings in French or Italian but has a very heavy accent when speaking those languages. You learn songs by imitating, like the video states, even more so when it’s a language foreign to you. And those very specific pronunciation skills don’t automatically translate to speech
I've thought about this for a long time, thanks for the great video! Shout out to Justine Frischmann of Elastica for always keeping her British accent in their songs. It gave them an awesome sound.
@someguy325es As a non-english native speaker, I can distinguish the difference between spoken British and American accents but I not when sung. I tried very hard to understand what Dave is saying except for pronunciation of some words, I cannot differentiate accents in British music.
Hozier is so interesting to listen to because he will lean more into an American drawl when singing a blues influenced song. Then, when going for a more folk sound, he seems to embrace more of his natural Irish accent. It’s very fun to listen to. 😊
I can’t stand that kind of fake accent. It’s embarrassing.
@@ActuallyDoubleGuitarsAmericans still say they’re going to mass if they’re catholic. But church is a good umbrella term since there’s a million different variations of Christianity here.
@@des5592 It's the same here in Ireland, @Thecuriousincident1 has never met a prod lol. Hozier's parents are Quakers.
@lapdogshuffle I didn't know he had Quaker parents that's cool.
@des5592 Yes, we must cater to the American market.
It’s definitely a genre thing. For example, a lot of country singers don’t even have Southern accents, but the music starts and suddenly they have this extremely strong twang 😅
And by "don’t even have accents" I suppose you mean they have a standard American accent
@@reezlaw I meant southern accents, of course, that’s implied.
I sing a lot in lots of different styles, and it is really hard to sing country music without putting on a southern accent. I try to sing it in my normal accent (northern US) but it's almost impossible. The music and the accent just go together.
It’s the fake cowboy hats 🤣😂🤭
And that, precisely, is one reason why I detest country music.
David Bowie used to sing with his natural soft London accent for his more thoughtful and poetic songs - 'The Bewlay Brothers' etc. - (a big influence on him was Anthony Newley, who always sang with a pronounced London accent), but he'd switch to an American accent - 'Young Americans' etc - for his rock/soul/pop songs.
He'd flip his accent, depending on the genre he was using.
An interesting point, which emphasises the rank that it’s the musical style that dictates the pronunciation.
I ought to report you to the Gnome Office!
@@MisterBrain
Obscure, but understood! 😀
@MisterBrain ha ha ha, hee hee hee
A great example of Bowie using a cockney accent is on tthe song Scary Monsters And Super Creeps, and that's definitely not one of his more thoughtful and poetic ones. He exagerates his own cockney accent to give the lyrics a more menacing feel. "She 'ad an 'orror of rooms...". I feel that there's almost an element of code switching over the years in Bowie's vocals and indeed his speaking voice, from the more camp or theatrical nasally voice he used in his more sexually ambiguos Ziggy Stardust days, to the deeper baritone he used a few years later to convey a sense of isolation. It's interesting watching interviews of him over the years where his accent changes depending on who he is being interviewed by and the period.
As an American, my ears perk up happily when you are doing your American imitation. It reminds me of when I said a couple of words in Japanese to my cat from many years past. He was adopted from a Japanese owner, and if I spoke to him in Japanese, he always looked at me like my IQ just jumped by 20.
Yes, English accents always make people sound and seem so much more intelligent. But as soon as someone starts talking with a twang, they just somehow seem intellectually deficient. 😂
@dirzygypsy Which English accents make people sound more intelligent exactly? Cockney? Brummie? Geordie? South London? Scouse? I don’t know about this one 😂
@@fatboyRAY24 The Queen's English, of course.
@@fatboyRAY24 So you are assuming regional accents won't sound intelligent? Where are you from? 1956? ffs
Classically, the Oxford one.
I remember listening to Sophie Ellis-Bexter's "Murder on the Dancefloor" where her British accent is so prevalent. Sounds great, and it was with that song that I realised how rare you can hear a British accent in pop.
Hahaha I'm British, I always thought she was Australian.
Same but that is the reason why I like the song it’s sexy and British sounding
By the time she released that song the UK had been through about 20 years of britpop, when British accents (estuary English: Blur, Manc: Oasis, Sheffield: Pulp, etc) became mainstream for the first time in decades, so it was pretty much the norm at the time.
Great example, “I know, I know, I know”. It would sound recognisably ‘transatlantic’ with, “Ah know”.
spice girls too right@@garethmiguel
It's actually interesting because it happens in French too, with most French Canadian singer like Céline Dion who sing with a metropolitan accent but talk with a strong québécois accent.
I was thinking the same thing. Daniel Belanger is another example. Although, once in a while if I listen to either of them, I hear the quebecois, especially Belanger.
Yes Celine is the best example
The most wellknown francophone singer
What is metropolitan accent? A normal france french?
What about quebecois accent? Is it also different compared to canadian french?
@@harysviewty Maybe I should have said standard French accent for metropolitan. After all there are plenty of accent in the European part of France. Québéquois is in indeed French Canadian, since most French speaker in Canada are in the province of Québec. There are also probably different accent in Canada but they all sound the same to me, as a French person from the North-West of the country. I used Céline Dion as an example, but there are many Québéquois singers that are well-known in France such as Garou or Natasha St-Pierre, who also sing with a standard accent but talk with a strong accent. It happens also with Francophone from Africa or the Pacific, or even in France itself, as most French people from the South of the country have recognisable accents when talking but a standard one when singing, even if some sing with their accent. Francis Cabrel is a great example of both ; he began his music carrer with a standard accent when singing, but once he became famous, he switched to his regional accent. Today there are many more that sing with their accents like Kendji Girac.
I hope it wasn't too long.
@@sego4125 I didn't understand anything of the French Canadian of my mother's (and her relatives when visiting), but she did have a sort of strong East Coast accent, not as strong as a New Yorker, though.
I guess you haven't listened to Québec folk music.
I completely have forgotten about this. I remember noticing this when I was a child in the 70s and early 80s and how surprised I was when I heard my favorite bands and artist speak for the first time and to hear their British, Irish and Australian accent… I was surprised because they didn’t speak like the way they sang. I’m glad you brought this up.
That's true for me too.
@@websurfer5772Me too. I noticed they lost their accent when they sang.
also cool when you realise what genre is generally in your accent, here in Australia, recently indie rock has become big with Aussie artists and it feels like our accent suits that genre better. Same thing with Geordie and other english accents with punk rock
It’s also worth noting that the vowels used in American music are easier to align the first resonance and second resonance in the vocal tract (especially in higher notes)
That’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
How do I learn more about this?
@@cocdcyMost vocal coaches on YT have some information on it, "Choosing vowels/consonants" as some put it. There are certain vowels that are difficult to actually articulate when you're belting, screaming, using head voice/falsetto, etc. For note I used to play rhythm in a band and had to learn how to do backup vocals, I knew better than to just start screaming 'til it worked, so I have some years of being scolded by an expert, but am by no means one.
A big part of why the accent changes has to do with the genre of music as well, but I imagine phunkykelpie is right about certain vowels aligning with first/second resonance, I'm just nowhere near technical enough to put it in any professional terms and was taught how things 'feel' and 'sound', but not necessarily why they do.
In simple terms "Sometimes it's not possible to get the right sound when using certain consonants and vowels, it's easier than singing in your normal accent and it just sounds better, but what type of accent varies drastically from genre to genre, and even song to song in a genre."
A fancy interpretation. There are plenty of British songs sung with British accents. The real reason is that rock is American music and the Brits are imitating American accents.
@@johnkrieger185 i think it's a little deeper than simply imitation..
i've observed that non-americans (and not british) w/ heavy accents sound much closer to american-english when singing (just singing not a public performance). it's a fascinating phenomenon
It's not just English-speaking singers that do this; a lot of Japanese rock sounds like Japanese spoken in an American accent, for instance.
I'd love to see a multi-lingual followup to this. Do German rock singers adopt American traits, for instance?
@@Neophlegmit's not necessarily the accent that's different, but I do think that a lot of German mainstream pop is modeled after American pop nowadays - with a dash of German Schlager influence. Shallow lyrics and the melodies all sound the same. Painful to listen to imo.
ok that is really really strange
David gilmour??
Can you name some examples?
A thorough and wonderful analysis. The influence of the African-American community on our pronunciations in music is remarkable!
I remember when I first heard The Proclaimers back in late 80s. It was so refreshing to hear a non-American accent in a song! 😄
when you gorrrrrrrr.......
You just need to take a 🚿 shower
@@CurtOntheRadio
Why don't you leave it out?
To most Scots lower class English accent's some uneducated and upper class just reduclass.
@@Albanach-je1nk Why do I leave what out?
@@CurtOntheRadio Maybe he means the letter r after vowels. In Scotland we say centre as centerr, close to how we see it spelled. Whereas someone from England outside west country sounds to us like they are saying centah. Checked out rhotic accents on wikipedia. Rs historically were pronounced in England but then got dropped in sometime around 19th century,
I was told years ago that accents “disappear” when singing, but now that I know that everyone has an accent, so singing is unlikely to sound accent-less to me unless it’s actually an American accent, I realized this had to be a lie. I’m glad someone made a video about this because it always bothered me.
Singers generally have to learn to sing this way - it comes with training rather than being how people would naturally sing.
“Accents disappear while singing” is very easily disproven by listening to a lot of country music, where Texan and southern accents often blast through even in songs that aren’t “talky” at all. I’d reccomend “I’m going under (getting over you)” as an example, it’s very much a song being sung but the singer’s accent is super strong and obvious
Also, an American accent isn't "accentless".
@@thatonehumanoid7756 Often it depends on the style of the song. For example, listen to the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" from "Let it Bleed". That would be ridiculous with a Cockney accent.
Agree this explanation also sounded like BS to me…
This applies to every language. A swedish popstar might have the thickest Scania accent but then go on to sing in "general Swedish".
I remember hearing Lilly Allen for the first time and that she stood out to me even though I normally don't listen to that kind of music, it was because she actually retains her spoken accent while singing.
It's important to note that the accent one uses when singing really depends on the song's genre. 80s New Wave was essentially a British genre, so most of the songs churned out from within that genre had British accents. Listen to Depeche Mode, the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Modern English, etc... They use British accents.
In Cebu and other Cebuano-speaking areas in the Philippines, there was a bit of a counterculture against Manila-dominated pop which was largely American-influenced and it was 80s New Wave - particularly British New Wave - that dominated the airwaves in such areas and struck a chord with the teenagers of the late 80s and 90s.
One band from Cebu City - Sheila and the Insects - was heavily- influenced by 80s New Wave and so their songs sound very British (some friends say "Cure-like") as does their lead vocalist Orven Enoveso's accent when singing their own songs. (his wife was one of my neighbors within our small middle class gated community back in high school in the late 80s)
It's always about the genre. Imagine Irish folk music (jigs, reels, etc) sung with an American or British accent. The only acceptable accent for such a genre would be an Irish one.
I agree and would give the closely related example of post-punk (ex. Talking Heads) and post-punk revival (ex. The Strokes) -- both from New York City, both emulating a sound that emerged from the UK, so they sing like it.
Another reason why the 80's is the best music decade EVAH!! ;-)
OrionPD, yes. Agreed.
I suspect it's the contemporary British singers singing with an American accent but not the previous, and glorious, generation of artists.
And by the way always and forever, thank you to Great Britain and the British people whose creativity, since the 1960s, has given the rest of the World hundreds of unique bands and music of unparalleled beauty, quirkiness and atmosphere. What would our lives have been without British bands? Thank you from Palermo, Sicily, to Cocteau Twins, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Discharge, Lush, Wire, Colin Newman, Killing Joke, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Broadcast, The Smiths, Human League, Curve, Skunk Anansie, Genesis, Steve Hackett, Boards Of Canada, Adam & The Ants, Public Image Limited, Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole & The Commotion, The The, Napalm Death, Cranes, Cardiacs, Led Zeppelin, Yazoo, Iron Maiden, Police, Blur, Fall, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Jamiroquai, Seal, Slowdive, Clash, Madness, The Beatles, Cure, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Goldfrapp, Dubstar, Charlatans, Ride, Heaven 17, Judas Priest, Marillion, The Buggles, Throbbing Gristle, Japan, Nick Drake, This Mortal Coil, Pet Shop Boys, Cardiacs, Damned, Dire Straits, Echobelly, Teardrop Explodes, Carcass, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Thrilled Skinny, Dead Or Alive, Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, XTC, The Streets, Pretenders, The Queen, Lily Allen, Tears For Fears, Supertramp, The Kooks, Duran Duran, Groove Armada, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, Saxon, Dead Can Dance, Massive Attack, Electric Light Orchestra, The Who, Inspiral Carpets, The Wedding Presents, Kate Bush, Placebo, The Rolling Stones, Housemartins, Visage, Culture Club, Expelled, The Jam, P.J. Harvey, Gary Numan, Howard Jones, Suede, Everything But The Girl, Roxy Music, Thrilled Skinny, Freur, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 10cc, Ladytron, Japan, Morcheeba, Helen Love, Spiritualized, Loop, Th' Faith Healers, Mark Ronson, Pretenders, Bauhaus, Kate Nash, Lotus Eaters, Black Sabbath, Oasis, The Sundays, All Saints, Portishead, Verve, Exploited, David Bowie, Talk Talk, Bauhaus, Elastica, Hey Elastica!, David Gray, Joe Jackson, Nick Kershaw, Spandau Ballet, Supergrass, The Korgis, Badly Drawn Boy, Tricky, Pale Saints, The Creatures, Bronski Beat, Fine Young Cannibals, Madness, Extreme Noise Terror, Stranglers, Stereolab, Keane, Motorhead...
My favorite 80s New Wave music is from Germany, and it started in the late 70s. I think a lot of British bands were influenced by German music at that time.
Yeah, Adele is essentially a blues singer, but she draws from American blues versus the Blue-Eyed Soul of Annie Lennox
I worked in a linguistics lab in Canada briefly, and they wanted to do a study on Canadian accent in singing. Being a singer from Canada, they recruited me as a pilot subject (I didn't know specifically what they were looking for at the time). They had re-written the lyrics to Can You Feel the Love Tonight to include as many contexts as possible where Canadian raising would be applied - and I didn't raise a single one of them. At first I blamed my English parents, thinking my accent was probably not typically Canadian - but then I realized that deep down, I *knew* I was singing a Disney song, and I had imitated an American accent. I don't know if they were ever able to get that study off the ground XD
I just sang (to myself) about of "House of the Rising Sun" (yes, sung by an English band). No Canadian Rising there. It sounds weird when singing it the way I would say "house".
I guess we go for imitation when singing, at least somewhat
I've been fascinated to see children here in New Zealand adopting American accents when playing make-believe. They clearly associate it with fiction and fantasy thanks to things like TV and video games, and all things Disney.
I'm Canadian too and when I sing I default to a sorta Kentucky accent. The /ai/ vowel is turned into just a long [a:].
@@thromboidthat is such an interesting observation, I've noticed it too in Ireland come to think of it
@@thromboid American kids do that and it's easy for us to forget that people in other countries view our accents the same way we view theirs. I think that's where the view of all of you "dropping/removing your accent" comes from. We actually say that for anyone with a strong regional accent as well though.
~ This was awesome, Dave. As a Black American, born and raised in the South, a polyglot, as well as a singer-songwriter, I can’t find a flaw anywhere in this assessment.
As a matter of fact, when people pronounce my name, particularly because I am from the Southern culture, I prefer it without - what I typically describe as - the “hard Rs”.
… loved this.
Thank you. It’s wonderful to hear from you.
Thanks Dave, this was fascinating!
It’s the guy!
Professional comment 💀
Thank you.
Dave's passion makes this even more fascinating.
Dave I love how thoughtful you are when talking about the people and cultures that these accents, dialects and languages came from.
Wow, thank you. That’s a lovely comment.
I think that people over emphasize accents rather than how the voice is being used for the particular genre.The accent is not really the key element .
A lot of these British singers are not even copying a standard American accent...but a black American accent, which is quite popular.
Indeed.
The "losing" the accent reminds me of an interview with Hugh Laurie, in Actor's Corner I think. He mentioned how USAmericans were shocked that he is British, and would congratulate him on losing the accent. And he said, miffed: "I don't lose the accent, I put one on!"
Indeed.
A good example of people singing American songs in their local accent is in the film The Commitments, where the backing singers are singing in Mustang Sally, "Roide, Sally, Roide," in their strong Dublin accents. Until the lead singer admonishes them of course, and tells them to sing in American.
Yes. I remember that scene.
say it loud, i'm black and i'm proud
5:14 is my favorite part where he spoke truth on the African American HUGE contribution to American music. THANK YOU❤
The pure truth!
African Americans are directly responsible for R&B, Hip-Hop, Rap, Soul, Jazz, Funk, and basically all modern EDM by way of inventing House and Techno…
@@paros320 Yes absolutely true.
@@paros320 House and techno has basically zero black influence.
@@freneticness6927
You are kidding, right? Almost all of the OG (Chicago) House and (Detroit) Techno pioneers were black.
Vowel modification is a tactic often used by singers/singing teachers to enable easier transitions through the vocal range. Some vowel ‘placements’ are easier to product through different areas of the voice. For example a hard EE will tend to pull the larynx up which is generally to be avoided so will be substituted with a softer sound to keep the larynx more neutral. As an Aussie myself that is a hard lesson but has been very successful in helping increase my range
I saw something a while back about Australian opera singers performing a modern opera set in Australia and having to learn to sing in their own accents.
Yes I was thinking this the whole way through. Those EE sounds are hard to sing and sustain! I learnt this from vocal coaches on UA-cam and it makes singing so much more pleasant when you're not straining on some sounds.
Hi Dave, thanks for another informative video! As an English teacher teaching in Spain I've noticed that my students can effect perfect 'American' accents when singing but still struggle in other areas of speech and I've always been fascinated by it. I'll certainly be using this video in future classes and sharing this video with other teachers! Keep up the great content
I don't know if you'll see this, but you'll appreciate it: I'm from Montana and lived in a mostly Spanish speaking neighborhood in DC. I wanted to be able to understand what people were saying & sass the dudes harassing me. I knew my Spanish teacher had a different accent than I'd heard growing up around Texas Mexican folks, but didn't think much of it. She was from SEVILLE. So I started sassing the fellas (the harassment turned out to just be saying I was pretty, untrue but harmless) with A LISP...the drunk dudes fell over laughing and couldn't control themselves 😂😂😂
Didn’t they prove that sung words are completely different to the brain from spoken words?
I'm an American, and I sing in an Episcopal (Anglican) church, where most of our music is from the Anglican choral tradition. A friend asked me why we change our accents when we sing, saying it sounds affected. This video gives me a great response to questions like that, even though it's in the opposite direction! The pronunciation changes the musical style, and music just sounds better with the pronunciation that the composer imagined.
Thanks. Good observation.
My church is Eastern Orthodox, and it reminds me of how some people say eether and neether, and some say eigh-ther and nigh-ther (latter for me, but I don’t know if I’ve always said them that way or if it was because I took German in school-learned basically no German except for…songs 😆), but for Communion we recite a prayer once, and sing it once with nigh-ther. m.ua-cam.com/video/J5D4d26iUCo/v-deo.html
“Of Your Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of Your Mysteries to Your enemies, neither like Judas will I give You a kiss; but like the thief will I confess You: Remember me, O Lord, when You come in Your Kingdom.”
(…i.e., at the Second Coming, i.e. on Judgement Day.) Haven’t noticed if anyone switches between e sound and i sound between the 2, if we all say it with the i sound even in ordinary speech, or what, but apparently the e sound is the typical one in America, while I think it would sound strange with the e sound in the hymn.
And one of my daughters, at first 2, now 3, says it with the e sound at home and I wonder where it came to her from. Unlike a lot of others, she doesn’t watch much Peppa Pig, not getting any British accent. 😆
I just looked up the origin of “either”: æghwæþer, pronunciation, /ˈæːjˌxwæ.θer/, and the “æːj” is the i sound, since it is here: www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=1111 . Supposedly America has the original pronunciation of words, never changed, but here it DID! 😅
Can’t think of any other examples in church, and not sure what our pronunciation means about language. We have a couple hymns partly in Old Church Slavonic, and have a lot of Greek words incorporated the way “hallelujah”, “hosanna”, and “amen” became incorporated. (Absolutely “ah-men”. “Ay-men”? 😬😳 No way. 😄) The church is a melting pot. 🙂🤷♀️ In the OCA, which is Russian, but it was founded as Macedonian and Bulgarian; there are a few Russians, and Ukrainians. The priest is Ukrainian-English-Canadian. Lots of Macedonians, Ethiopians, and miscellaneous Americans. We’re in northeastern Indiana. I’m from northeast Ohio between the Cleveland accent and Appalachian accent. My husband is from Northeast Ohio close to the Pittsburgh accent.
Here’s an example from out of church: people changed “crayfish” to “crawfish”. But it went from gerbhitaz, to grobidos, to krabitaz, to krebitja, to crevice, to crayfish, to (in some places) crawfish. But “craw” is “mouth” and the “cray” has the “crab” meaning. And of course it’s not a fish, so the “vice” ending is the last one not changed into a wrong word. So “crayfish” (what I say) is less incorrect than “crawfish”, but (oops 😅) “crevice” is what it should be. The ay sound is original. From ay to ah to ay to ah.
Makes sense, fascinating subject this is.
A lot of dropping the R comes in musical training--in choirs we were told to minimize certain sounds to make the words more open, helping blend. Most of the music our choirs were doing involved tones that wanted vowels more forward and open, decreased sibilants, moderated plosives, etc.
And if you did the opposite, smiling through your ee's and prolonging the Rs you got a much more "country" sound.
I keep thinking about Gerard Way and how he would overemphasize his Rs. It sounded so unusual so it ended up being really distinctive. Ghost of You immediately comes to mind.
Those are Glottal stops, you want to keep an open throat when singing, why German and Norwegian sound dreadful to sing in.
OR...sound like a pirate...
My voice and choir professor in college would immediately stop the song if someone put too much R in their pronunciation. He said it was too harsh and grinding, and it sounded like we were angry and about to start swearing. That's one of the biggest lessons I held on to after his classes, and it's something I still notice 25+ years later. In general, I love REO Speedwagon and their music, but "Keep On Loving You" absolutely grinds my gears every time I listen to it ... "When I said that I love you / I meant that I love you foreverrrrrrrrrrrr ..."
AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!! 🤬
American here. 7th grade was the first year that we had school choir in my district. Early on, we got a lesson from our choir teacher regarding dropping the R's. One of my classmates likened it to a British accent. This video caught my attention because I always think about that lesson when I hear a singer stress the R sound. I never thought about any of the singers mentioned in this video sounding American or singing in an American accent.
This makes me really appreciate the singers that make the effort to keep their accents as much as possible when singing.
Another UA-camr made a video discussing the history behind American regional accents, and he shows that when you speed up some of our American dialects, you will hear a regional accent from the place where the population emigrated from. So, New Jersey and New York have a lot of Irish and Italian, and the South has a lot of English accents.
Happen to have a link? I'd like to see it.
I don't really care where, but I love regional accents. Something when you hear a local pronounce a local town in a way you'd never guess is great.
Can't hide in a small town world.
May we have the link please?
@@kthp2343 I’m not 100% certain if these are the videos to which they were referring to, but Erik Singer does a great 3 part series called “Accent Experts Gives Tour of U.S. Accents” on WIRED’s UA-cam channel. In 3 parts, he breaks down, demonstrates, and has experts assist on the historical basis of how so many different accents formed throughout history, and continue to do so. I’m fairly certain they were referring to his series, as it’s excellently done!
@@PaigeOutLoud^ Couldn’t tag you both. But definitely recommend!
I've heard a lot of UA-camrs talking about this issue from the point of view of cultural crossover, but you're the first one who I've heard mention vowel modulation, and it's benefits. As a lifelong singer, I would just like to say thank you. :D
I think this is really well illustrated when you think about other genres of music. It takes active concentration to sing an Irish folk song and resist the urge to slip into a hokey cod-Irish brogue, or likewise to sing a sea shanty and not adopt a vaguely West-Country piratical sort of an accent, or when people sing classical choral music, they adopt very conservative RP like pronunciation.
Very good points. And it’s amusing to try to swap them round.
Ha, that is true! A sea shanty would sound strange without a faintly cod-Cornish accent!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages
I don't know much about singing.
But I can certainly educate you about accents.
Nowadays most whites kids in London speak English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect which is very different from the anglo saxon dialect of English which is spoken in this t.v programme by this presenter.
In the early 2000's, young white kids on council estates in London became JAMAICANISED.
This is when they starting speaking with English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect.
For example, Essex county is the only place in Britain where the cockney dialect/and or accent is still spoken.
@@shaunigothictv1003🚨🚨Racist alert🚨🚨
Essex people speak estuary, not cockney. Cockneys have all moved up north and now spend their time telling everyone about how much better "Landon" is, or talking about the Kray twins, who they all knew personally of course..
The English language has constantly changed, unless thees int' Yorkshire.
@@alfsmith4936
Wrong.
Plenty of Cockneys moved to Essex.
I have been there myself so I know.
This is so enlightening! I'd always wondered why it was hard to determine people's nationality when they were singing, not realizing that it's because people often use American pronunciations in songs.
I think if you ask any American they'll tell you what they think about non-Southern singers putting on a US southern accent to sing country music. It's endemic to the genre.
Indeed.
: non-Southern singers putting on a US southern accent to sing country music". Yes, and badly. Cringe, in fact.
@@jamesdoyle2769 Not always. Listen to the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" from "Let it Bleed". That would be ridiculous with anything but a Southern/Western accent. By the way, that was closer to the original way that "Honkey Tonk Women" was envisioned.
CCR from Northern California.
@@946towguy2i had no idea! everytime i listen to bad moon rising i like to sing and exaggerate the accent bc with the way they say "bound to take your life" i thought surely some of them are from a more rural state.
One thing I love about Biffy Clyro is that the singer has always kept his Scottish pronunciation. It adds so much more character to the music and I wish more brits did the same!
Billy Bragg.
Billy Bragg is from Essex.
Man. They used to be one of my favourite bands and that sort of explains why! I mean, I always knew they were Scottish and Simon has an accent but I never really made the connection. It just gives them a different sound.
Lauren from Chvrches too
Which is interesting because they are one of those bands that are pretty big in the UK/Ireland, but not in America.
this is so true, i love languages and i've learned songs in punjabi, arabic, romanian, portuguese, hawaiian, french, and italian and know the lyrics by heart. these are all languages i dont speak at all, and can get frustrated easily trying to speak them, but somehow, as you say, in music, it's just so much easier. what a great video on a wonderfully fascinating subject. well done
That is extremely impressive.
I already speak English and I happen to love rock so that's never happened to me. Although, I do like trying to sing in Spanish some.
This was fascinating. As an actor, I’ve always struggled to do an American accent. But when I’m signing, it seems to just happen by default.
Cause American accent is default 😂😅
@@ijoutdoorwut
You can't make your tongue be lazy while talking, while singing your making the sounds not the words.
this is accurate, it's fascinating and it happens to people who's language is latin based
I remember asking British people when I studied abroad why British musicians often sound American when they sing. They pretended it wasn’t a thing. I knew that was rubbish!
As an American I wondered this about The Beatles when I was a really little kid, I remember asking my Dad why they sang like Americans.
They had strong liverpudlian twang on most songs actually
I wondered the same thing about the Beatles when I was a little kid. Why do they have such strong English accents when they speak, but not when they sing?
The best example is The Rolling Stones.
@@shimmerbay The answer is simple: pop, rock, soul, rap, jazz - every form of modern music came from the US. The Brits and everyone else found it all so cool and just copied, because they wanted to be cool too. To sing in a British accent is now as awkward as if James Bond or Downton Abbey were to be acted in an American accent!
I asked my mum the same question as a kid, and she said I was imagining it :/
The Southern American accent has been very prevalent in singers from around the world - just listen to Elton John, Michael Hutchence (INXS), Mick Hucknall (Simply Red), Mick Jagger, Jay Kay (Jamiroquai).
"In Watermelon Sugar" was a novel by Richard Brautigan, an American author, that was published in 1968. So, Harry Styles was rather late to the board. Also, you can make watermelon syrup or sugar. If the juice has sugar in it, it can be condensed to syrup, and if it can be condensed to syrup, you can make sugar from it. Maple syrup is made from maple tree sap in the spring, and that sap is not remotely as sweet as watermelons are. It tastes pretty much like faintly sweet water.
Changing pronunciation when singing also applies to classical as well as rock/pop/jazz etc. Flat vowels or open ‘ahh’ type vowels are often easier to express in than typical diphthong English vowels. I have often been directed by a choir master or a producer to alter pronunciation or to leave off an ending consonant because it sounds better or lends itself better to musical or dynamic expression, rather than to sound American for its own sake.
Exactly! There may be nothing worse than a 50+ member chorus trying to simultaneously sing an 'r' or 's' sound! It's either 'start your engines' or 'you've got a leaky tire'
Yes I was thinking about that during the video too - the examples of non-rhotic pronunciation he used immediately pinged to me as the classic open sound for projection that I was taught by my singing teacher and choir masters. AS someone with short English vowels it always grated to be force to sing with long vowels, but I understand how it improves the tone of the sound.
Yes, singing almost necessitates certain vowel modifications. If I sang exactly the same way I talk (I have a standard American accent), it wouldn't sound very good either
Thinking the same. Particularly with Barbara Streisand example with the word "somewhere". You wouldn't want to put a hard "r" on a note higher in the range and/or for a sustained note.
Sometimes it also has to do with blending phrasing. For example, if the song has more legato features, you wouldn't want to be fully pronouncing hard consonants such as "t", "p", "d", etc.
Does ANYONE pronounce the ‘t’ in “l’aspetto”??
I (American) was quite involved with classical choral singing as a teenager and young adult. We were encouraged to sing in certain ways (non-rhotic, certain styles of vowels, etc.) to get the classical sound. I seemed have ended up with some kind of Brit speaking accent at times. I met some new coworkers at a job meeting and I was greeted by an enthused UK lady who thought that she had found a kindred Brit in me. It was a bit embarrassing because I didn't want to be pegged as someone affecting a posh to Americans accent.
@ 3:18 As a boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, I refused to believe that the Beatles were English and not American. I would hear them singing in what sounded like American accents. It wasn't until my older sister took me to see "Hard Days Night" that I was convinced otherwise.
Odd because I hear a lot of British in lmost of their songs.
For the Irish fans out there, I’ve been listening to a lot of the cranberries lately, that Dolores O’Riordan does not cover up her Irish roots in any sense. I’m a music teacher and my vocal students here in the US often ask me why she sings so “weird,” and with all the pride and respect I can muster for a culture that isn’t my own, I say “she’s not being weird. She’s being herself. That’s something we can all get better at and learn from them, especially in a context where it’s so rare to hear people not change their accent to sing.” Another great example is the internationally successful band “CAN” made up of Germans who sing in English, but sound as “foreign” to my American ears as any singer that sings in their native language. Not everyone adopts an American accent, it’s just rare to find those who dont
What a brilliant and insightful quote. Fair play to you.
Horslips and The Corrs always sound American to me. Out local expats here in So Cal, The Young Dubliners, definitely sound Irish. The modern Irish accent is closer to the way we speak in California than British speech patterns. Beastie Boys leaned toward the U.S. east coast sound without quite going full Brooklynese.
See also Björk
The English punk bands of the 1970s all sang with very pronounced English accents. I think they deliberately did so, to distance themselves from English bands who came before them, like the Rolling Stones, who sang with American accents. It was all to do with being authentic, I suppose. Also, the north of Ireland punk bands from the 70s, like Stiff Little Fingers, and the Undertones, sang in very pronounced north of Ireland accents.
The people who say her singing is weird, I wonder if they’ve only ever heard her sing the Zombies song, contrasted with Let it Linger in which her voice is very beautiful.
Now if we can just figure out how Ozzy goes from singing with an American accent to speaking with his native accent of Inaudible.
Whenever I see an interview with Ozzie if it’s not closed captioned I don’t watch it because for the most I have no idea what Osborne is saying.
As The Beatles progressed they dropped the American accents in some of their songs. The Kinks used a British/ American mix in their songs . When you move on to the 70’s Bowie and Pink Floyd would often sing with British accents.
I suppose that’s a sign of British music coming into its own.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesgreater use of British themes and idioms in mid-late Beatles and by the Kinks might explain it.
The first time I heard Amy Winehouse, I thought she was a southern African American singer, not a wee lass from London. Also a reason I enjoy the Proclaimers as a band is how they fully retained their Leith accent while singing
I find both approaches can work. Amy Winehouse made that Blues accent her own, and artists like the Pretenders make their accent an integral part of their music.
Thing about Amy is that once I knew she was English, I could notice it immediately (In the song "You know I'm no good" she even says "lickle" instead of "little" in one of the verses). On "Rehab" she sounds very Southern AAVE influenced, but on most of her other work, I think she does generally sound pretty English.
Yes. I was stunned to hear her speak on TV. Her Cockney was thick as brick. Despite sounding like a US Black woman when singing.
"wee lass"?? *cringe*
...I had no idea she wasn't American until now
Thanks for this explanation, it totally makes sense to me now! I always wondered why British singers sounded American when singing, not realizing it was basically the genre they were singing lol. Like someone else commented, I couldn't imagine singing an Irish song in my southern American accent 😂
A nice example of this is rap. In the past, brits have tended to affect an American accent when rapping. However, modern grime artists now use their native MLE. I think this is because grime is an English invention, with, if anything, a Caribbean influence.
I believe this to be true but I don’t have enough evidence to assert it as a fact.
Another great video Dave, cheers👍🏻
I’m pretty sure you’re right. Thanks - I’m so glad you’re enjoying my content.
Grime dates back to at least 2010, if not earlier, and is not just explicitly Anglo-Carribean in its linguistic accents but also its music: it builds on British styles of music like Garage (themselves Anglo-Carribean constructions), and thus always had a much faster tempo than characteristic of rap generally (180bpm vs 120bpm) - contrast any old Skepta track with a Giggs song to see this in action.
not only that but jungle dnb and garage emcees had been 'rapping' in their native accents with that same massive caribbean influence long before the split between garage and grime in around 02/03
@@amanwithaplaninavan Indeed, I didn't want to get too deep in to it. I think it's because so many MCs started out in the rave, using their own accents was natural
Some early (i.e. 1990's) artists in the UK hiphop scene did affect Americanised accents, but the hardcore rave / jungle MCs definitely used MLE, and those MCs and Jungle music was hugely influential on other UK based genres that came after it, directly and indirectly.....UKG, Grime, Dubstep, and more tangentially Drill (which was hugely influenced by Grime).
I am super impressed that you included so many diacritics in the IPA transcription. It’s not easy to identify diacritics.
My native language is German, but I grew up in Canada. In my early 20's I moved to London for work and grew accustomed to British accents. Then I visited Germany for a few days. On my way back to London on the hovercraft I was convinced that everyone around me was speaking German and it wasn't until I focused on an individual conversation that I realized that everyone was actually speaking English. The inflections and rhythms were exactly the same.
English is like 50% Germanic 30%Latin 10% French (in know french is latin rooted)10% (Hindu,Celtic,Arabic,Patios etc).
@@Matthew_Ssali Actually, only 30% of the words in English can be traced to Germanic origin, and around 50% of the words can be traced to Italic origin, where Latin developed from, which also means French.
Alison Moyet (back in the 80s) also sounded *very* distinct for the fact that she sung in an English accent. You would know instantly that she was English (from the south even) which even at the time was quite striking.
Adele part 1 you mean
Great video as usual, Dave! As a singer and amateur linguist myself, happening to be American, I appreciate how you mention a context-dependent “pull” in either direction - toward or away from rhotics. Singing in a paid choir in college patterned on the Oxbridge tradition, on the clock I may as well have been in England all the time, and not always consciously. I find this the most in artists who are really “out of place” for the style of music they make. I’d be interested to know what you thought of the vocalist for a very underground group called For Against, who made extremely British-sounding post-punk in the 80s despite hailing from Lincoln, Nebraska. Their songs are a real trip for a linguist.
Thank you! I
So glad you like it. Thanks for that tip. I’ll give them a listen.
I sing in choirs in Montreal but was taught to sing in a similar Oxbridgey style. One of my choirs is an amateur choir, totally bilingual in membership. It leads to some fun moments for the native Francophones when we have, say, an Anglican Christmas carol in our repertoire, and just as much amusement for the native Anglos like myself when we have a well-known song in French, and we shoot for more of a colloquial style. Choir is a great place to experience a little bit of linguistic diversity :)
Really interesting! As a choral singer (well former, but I'd like to get into it again soon!) from London UK I really enjoy listening to many choirs on UA-cam, and so many great American choirs absolutely ace the music itself but don't quite sound like the here, though its clear they are trying to get as close as possible haha!
No hate to them, but I find the Mormon Tabernacle Choir videos on UA-cam pretty unwatchable due to the pretty extreme pronunciation of 'r' at the ends of words which to my British ears, really ruins masterpieces like Handel Messiah etc.
@@colinjones5379 absolutely! over the 10 or so years i sang in a choir, i think i sang in about 8 languages haha
Could you make a video about the articulatory setting of general British English?
The reason consonants like R are dropped when singing is simply because it is far more musical to sustain a vowel sound over several beats than a consonant (unless you're Sinatra, who liked to sustain an N consonant). That's why Italian is the language of opera. Lots of vowels, particularly at the end of words. Also, when you hold a vowel over several beats you tend to use a purer form of the vowel- dipthongs would sound really silly if sung. Using the purer form "normalizes" the sound so Brits and Yanks sound more alike.
The opera example is a good one.
Weird Al Yankovic insists on not doing that.
@@-SUM1- I mean, it's just his style like that.
Try listening to Finnish songs. They definitely do not (to quote the Proclaimers) ‘throw the R away’. OK it doesn’t last for several beats, but it’s definitely long 😄.
It’d be difficult to sing a love song without the R mind, because the L word begins with R.
@@Chris-mf1rm one of the reasons I really enjoy listening to Finnish/Estonian music and speech!
I’m a music teacher and I was just having a very similar conversation to this with my students the other day. I hypothesize that the vowels necessary to project volume when singing are not the same as the vows we would use when we are speaking. My go to example is at the Apex of the melody in the American national anthem “land of the free“ sounding something more like “fray” because that produces a wider mouth shape that is more conductive to chest voice than the narrow “ee“Vowel that requires a much more closed oral posture. It’s just one example but I do think it is indicative of larger trends. I have found studying accents to be an under utilized skill for vocalists that ought to be A bigger part of vocal coaching discipline. There is an over emphasis on diction particularly amongst theater trained singers where the lyrics of the song also have to function as dialogue, and this has led me to encounter many students over pronounce their lyrics when singing Songs by artists like Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin and it just doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the performance
This was something i noticed when watching "Never Enough" being sung on foreign versions of The Voice. Everyone copied Loren Allred's "to MAAAAAAAAY" on the big note in the chorus except one classically trained singer who had enough welly in his voice to belt out "to MEEEEEEEEE" correctly but it sounded strange. I suppose singing well known songs is really a case of monkey see, monkey do.
Funny that people from Nassau county in Long Island NY often pronounce words very similarly to this presenter. I remember my uncle pronouncing "bottle" when he'd ask for a bottle of beer with nearly silent 't's.'
Thanks for another great video! It’s not only in English. Spanish songs are pronounced in the accent of Puerto Rico (a US territory which gave birth to many Latin pop stars). A notable feature is s-dropping at the end, and is now followed by Latin singers all across the world, eg Colombia and even Spain! There’s something to be said about American cultural hegemony.
S dropping is also a feature of many Colombian accents, especially from the caribbean
Also in Spain (Canary Island and Andalucia)
oh wow, as someone who doesn't even speak Spanish I realise I've already noticed this subconsciously
S droping is what I like about Venesualan and Colombian accent. Hate Spanish corathon kinda pronunciation.
That's absolutely wrong.
On one hand, many many many accents in Spanish drop the s (just like the Brits drop the r)
On the other hand, argentinean rock is sung with argentinean accent, spanish pop with spanish accent, mexican rancheras with mexican accent and chilean or peruvian folk with their corresponding accents. It is only reggaeton that is sung with puerto rican accent.
I'm a rock singer in Belgium and I write all my songs in English. When I sing them I use a broadly American accent. It's simply down to: what are your favourite singers and songwriters. I love a bunch of British bands but almost all of them sing in an American accent (as do the American artists I love, luckily).
And Tiesto, kygo collaborate with American artists
Try singing in the style of Ian dury 👍
As an American, I can spot a fake American accent from a mile away. (I'm married to a belgian).
Same goes for Céline Dion and lots of singers from Québec, they sing using a Parisian french accent and Céline Dion once said she couldn't sing with a Québec accent
I think what you're interpreting as 'accent' is considered in terms of 'timbre' by singers. Vowel and consonant sounds are chosen to fit the sound they want for the music. Classical singers choose differently than pop, and so on. So singing in a genre, pursuing the sound of that sort of music, will mean choosing certain sets of vowels and consonants, resulting in an apparent 'accent'.
I think this is right. Take Coldplay and Elbow as examples from a similar genre.
Chris Martin can’t produce the timbre he wants in his native RP accent so he sings with an American accent.
Whereas Guy Garvey is from Lancashire and naturally has the short vowel sounds required, so he’s able to retain his native accent when singing.
Timbre has absolutely nothing to do with RHoticism and vowel manipulation. TImbre is ONLY applicable to the particular frequency and melding of tones in any given voice. VOice print analysis has a great deal to do with TImbre
The role of music, and more broadly, poetry, in adopting or dropping accents is really interesting. I’m from Philadelphia and have a pretty typically White Philadelphian accent, which is one of the more complicated accents in American English I’m told. I still remember as a small child reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and wondering why Dr. Seuss sometimes rhymed certain words that don’t rhyme in my accent. That was when my mom suggested it might be a slant rhyme. I don’t know if she said slant rhyme specifically, but she did say something like, “In poetry people rhyme words that don’t perfectly rhyme in real life.” The vowel we use for sad and had are different than the vowel we use for bad, mad, glad. “Why are they glad and sad and mad and bad? I don’t know, go ask your dad” does not rhyme in Philadelphia English.
This is such a great comment. If anyone is interested in this accent phenomenon, it’s called æ raising / æ tensing, and it’s so cool in that it is such a great way of distinguishing where someone is from sometimes.
Here’s the Wikipedia page for it, and you’ll notice regional divisions on the chart, such as for Philadelphia and New York: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki//%C3%A6/_raising
This also explains why some British poetry doesn’t rhyme to Canadians. And since language is always changing, older poems tend to lose some of their rhyme-ability. It puzzled me as a kid
From Philly here and I knew some of us use different vowels for that 'a'. I notice it with 'gas' at times: some of us say 'gas' (or 'gahs') and others 'geeas' (g is hard in all instances there like the word geese)
I’m British and for me sad bad and mad rhyme but glad and had are different (and rhyme with each other) ..
Im Irish and all of those rhyme for me.
it was scrubbed here, and i love it so much. black beauty in the history of blues to rock, to disco and soul, to roll, and now r and b, pop
The music truthfully is imbued in black culture and the manipulation of the English language. Breaking language to give it more meaning is natural to AAVE and is an intrinsic tool in singing. Its poetic and beautiful so no surprise by the parallels.
Absolutely.
When I took singing lessons I was taught to use these "wider", american vowel sounds in order to open up the mouth more to create more space and project better, and I find it helps better with breath support too.
I had never thought there was a reason other than that why people sing that way. I wonder how the two of these factors interact/ are related.
Similar to why news anchors throughout North America all use a midwestern accent.
It’s more easily understood. That’s what I think…
I always thought this was the reason. 👍
I took the Mickey out of my son (from West Yorkshire) singing a word in one of his songs ('clearly') as if he was Scottish. He answered that it was impossible to sing it in Yorkshire within the song. I think US English vowels are just easier to drag out and fit to the music inany cases
James Blunt is a good example of someone who retains their British accent in their music
Yes James came to my mind.
The Beatles also sound particularly British in their music despite some features as explained in this video. They clearly aren't American.
@@moladiver6817True for many songs, but just as many were deliberately sung in an American accent
@@thecreepyllama I'm not sure about the deliberate part. I think it mostly happens automatically. Rock in Cockney accent just doesn't work. 😜
@@moladiver6817 it's funny, cos John Lennon, when asked why they sang in American accents, said something to the effect of "we aren't, we're singing in Liverpool accents"
What's very interesting is that people from Liverpool of the beatles generation speak in a _COMPLETELY_ different accent to modern people from Liverpool. Like, it is as different as the California American accent is from the posh London received pronunciation accent. You may only notice it if you live in Liverpool for a while, which I have, I moved here after growing up near London, because I went here for university and then just never left, it's the greatest city in the world IMO.
But yeah all you have to do is listen to, say, Paul McCartney speaking, and then listen to what a modern scouse accent sounds like. Or compare any of the beatles accents to modern scouse. There is nothing in common, it's crazy.
Like, I don't know how that's actually even possible. In half a century, the accents from an entire city have completely changed as to be unrecognisable.
Although mind you, some people thought John and Paul talked weird for scousers even back then, because they were particularly posh with posh upbringings who were well off and went to art school, and so spoke differently to working class scousers. But then even George and Ringo, who grew up working class, also sound completely different to modern scouse. And living in the city and talking to older people, older scousers really do sound very very different to younger ones.
I don't know if it's happened anywhere else in the UK. Or even the world for that matter. I didn't know accents could change so much so quickly, until I moved here after already being a huge beatles fan for years, and for the first time realised that modern scousers sound absolutely nothing like the beatles, not even remotely. I'm sure there's some great videos on UA-cam about this explaining it better than I can, if you search for something like "why do modern people from Liverpool have different accents to the beatles".
Also another very weird quirk about scouse accents that I've never heard of existing in literally any other accent, is that men and women pronounce words VERY differently. It's not all words. But I know there are videos about this on UA-cam because I watched one with an academic talking about scouse accents years ago and that's how I learned this, because I never would have noticed otherwise, because I'm not very observant. But yeah you take a word like "book", and one gender will pronounce it like "buke" and the other like "buuk". There are exceptions, like for example some gay men often pronounce it the "female" way (and there's nothing wrong with that of course, just pointing it out as an example). But yeah. I don't know what non-binary people do, because there's always exceptions anyway even in straight, cisgender people, it's not some kind of hard and fast rule, and speaking in one way or the other doesn't "prove" that they're that gender.
It made me almost want to go back to university and get another degree, in the science and study of accents, because as you can see there's so much that can be researched about it, so much to talk about, it's absolutely fascinating. And the science of it isn't settled by any means, because of the growth in the types of things I'm talking about such as gender, and how the accents of an entire city of people can completely 100% change to something entirely different over the course of only a single generation.
I also think modern gen Z and gen alpha brits have developed a strange new accent of their own that I believe probably comes from consuming more American media than ever, and especially on the Internet with youtubers they watch. It's just a kind of accent I notice with every youngish British youtuber. They seem to sound very very similar to each other even when they're from completely different parts of the country. It's like an Internet accent. How cool is that, that an accent can develop like that in only a few decades? If you watch enough British youtubers, and pay attention, you'll start to notice it too, how they all speak in a certain way regardless of what part of the country they're from and their family background.
So yeah the academic study of accents has never been fresher, really.
Many singers try to add as much affect as possible to sound cool and fancy.
As an American, I love hearing Irish, Scottish, English etc accents in music. Please let your culture and accents shine.
I've seen another video about this topic and it was said the American accent pronunciation is just easier to rhyme and sing too as well. It's not just a case of imitation.
They tend to be my favorites because the other covers all sound the same.
It's like it has more of a personality.
I'm Scottish and most instances of Scottish accents in music, Gerry Cinnamon and the like, make me cringe into myself. Mostly because Gerry Cinnamon is shite, so I've trained myself to hate the accent in music as well.
Very interesting point made on how it's easier to imitate/change accents when singing vs speaking. Reminds me of how sometimes people with stutters find it easier to speak fluently when singing. I wonder if these are related in any way?
Uh please note that in places like Boston and New York City the natives neglect the "r" in words like "park", and so on. There are many accents in the USA alone. You can travel 100 miles from virtually any major city and encounter a slightly different accent.
American accent different are miniscule compared to the UK's, which is a much smaller country
When I was a kid, I was kind of surprised to learn that Elton John is from the UK because he always sounded quite American. However, I quite enjoy hearing someone's natural accent while they're singing. I like the Small Faces song "Lazy Sunday" because it's soooo cockney!
This is so interesting! For me, it explains why for some reason it's super easy for me to switch a Scottish accent when singing that 500 miles song but not so much when I'm trying to do a Scottish accent without any song.
Also, that note that you had about using songs to improve our pronunciation in a target language was something I'd never thought of doing. Usually, I'd just listen to my favourite songs in my target language just for fun, but now I'd definitely keep in mind to sing along as well so that through the magic of music, I will somehow have acquired some understanding of the pronunciation of my target language
Very informative. Thanks
Thanks for your observations. I sang in a choir at grammar school. Our choirmistress was very particular about our pronunciation. We never did modern songs, so this wasn’t jarring at all. In my 40s I was asked to sing for a charity performance at my kids’ school - Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music. I’d never done a solo before and was very nervous. It went well though and I was asked to do more. At some point I realised that everything I sang was a bit clipped, too enunciated for the genre. It worked okay with Do Re Mi and with folk songs but with more ‘modern’ songs I sounded like a right stuffed shirt - Summer Holiday, Octopus’s Garden… I cringe to think about it now. 😂 We live and learn! Thanks for your observations.
I've long thought that one of the overarching reasons is that long notes in singing don't accommodate diphthongs very well, meaning that a singer will simplify it to a monophthong, just as is often done in speech in some US accents.
I’m sure that’s true.
Morrissey does some very long diphthongs. "Your father cracks a joke (joooaaakkh) and in the usual way (wuuaaaaiiiy) empties (emptuueeiiis) the reooom" "And I just can't explaiiiiin / So I won't even tryyy to"
This video made me understand why my French teacher in high school devoted every single Friday to singing songs in French! It was very very fun and I did not mind at all, but I never knew exactly why she put on the music and handed out the lyric books she’d made and had us all sing along. Thank you for making it click, and for throwing me back to such fun memories.
Yes, it’s a very effective method.
It's interesting to hear the singing accent discussion from the linguist perspective, as a trained singer, as some of the things here are easily explained by how easy/hard it is to sing certain vowels/consonants.
For example, 90% of Adele's choices are definitely to accomodate her style of singing. Hitting those big, high notes with such power requires very specific vowel choices. If she tried to sing that style (high belt) in her native accent, she just wouldn't be able to sing those things.
The same can be said for many other accents around the world where the native sound just doesn't accomodate singing the high notes
I also think it’s a matter of vocal technique. Singing can literally only happen on vowels and voiced consonants, so singers often voice consonants where they otherwise wouldn’t to make singing easier (and more pleasant to listen to.)
Which means it’s really hard to sing in any accent that heavily features t-glottalization and very easy to sing in an accent that heavily features flapping, simply for the reason that the voice is interrupted more often in the former.
2:26 thank you for posting the subtitles, I was worried I wasn't going to understand the singing.
Rock & Roll was I think done successfully in a Scottish accent (Alex Harvey) and a Manchester one (Mark E Smith, The Fall), but the convention is as you say to faithfully reproduce the American twang. Perhaps because all singers grew up mouthing the words along to American singers in the mirror. There might be something of an analogy from worldwide cinema goers in the 40s and 50s, as young people picked up expressions and mannerisms and fashion tips from golden-era Hollywood stars.
Indeed.
Sam Fender would be an interesting case study if you make another video on this topic. His biggest influence is Bruce Springsteen, but I think his Geordie accent is very prevalent. I’m thinking in ‘Seventeen Going Under’ where he sings ‘joker’ with the classic Geordie accent. But also, his accent is definitely less strong when he sings (or that’s how I perceive it) as when he speaks on stage (as someone not from the North East) I struggle to understand him sometimes, but completely understand all of his lyrics. He’d be a great singing accent case study! Great video
I remember the Fall of 1963, the Beatles were already being promoted in the US. The TV ads kept saying the "British are coming." They had a big promotion on TV before their 1964 US tour. When they got here, everyone expected something different. So, when they sounded much like an American band, people were asking about it. They needed someone like you to explain the reason why they sounded like an American band. Or, why they were so highly promoted when we already had American boy bands that would have loved that level of promotion.
That's interesting, I just realized it happens in other languages as well. I'm from southern Brazil and we pronounce hard Rs, but when singing, everyone I know will default to non-rhotic R's typical from Rio de Janeiro and Northeastern accents, where most of Brazilian popular music comes from
This is a very interesting video. I remember when I was a child in the US I discussed with my dad that many songs on the radio were sung with a Southern US accent.
I perceived that too as a child in the 1970s listening to the radio from NE Ohio.
I’ve always wondered about this but there are some songs where you can hear accents come out. Like the chorus of Ed Sheerans Perfect, specifically when he says grass. Interesting to listen to cover versions of it by Americans to see how they sing it haha. You can also hear his accent in Castle on the hill.
Yes, one day I’ll make a video about Ed. He slips up quite often.
I can definitely hear Ed is a Brit especially in his slow songs. In Perfect he say DAHN Sing for dancing and DAWK for dark. Paul McCartney is another one where I feel his speaking accent comes through strongly.
Yes you have bands that still have their accents like Blurry and Oasis.
But then there are American music groups who sound Brit-ish, like The Killers and Green Day.
YESSSS
I love that Ed kept his accent in that song. I love singing it in his accent too hehe
I find it very interesting when listening to Dua Lipa's music. She sings in a very american accent (to my Brazilian ears), but it completely changes once she's rapping.
Kate Bush, Brian Eno, Ian Dury and so many others have managed to create pop music with their own accents, and I do feel an immediate respect when people dare to be themselves. An interesting Artist who lets her UK residency creep into her singing is Jesca Hoop, who has a lovely Californian accent with new hints of Manchester. All the best Lucas
Hi Lucas. You are absolutely right. I think more people sing in their own accents than they used to.
Imogen heap is fun in that way too
Enter Shikari is a recent example!
Singers from the so-called Canterbury Scene such as Robert Wyatt and Richard Sinclair sang beautifully in their native accents.
Same for psychedelic furs
Dan Smith from Bastille is someone that is so interesting because his accent is so clear. I think that’s what has made their music so distinct.
I’m glad you mentioned the African American influence on singing pronunciation. I always heard AAVE influence in the typical singing accent, even in nonAAVE American accents
+1
I am Scottish, but I certainly tend to use a more neutral accent subconsciously when I sing, I think it is imitation in a way! I imitated my parents and peers learning to speak, I imitate what I hear singing and because the American features are prevalent, I learned to sing in an accent. Actually when singing, I use sounds that I wouldn't in normal speech, where a song is sung with a non-American accent, I'd find myself imitating that too! It is a performance! I CAN sing with a Scottish accent, it would have to be a choice though. Although it is good for those Proclaimers songs and such!
Another example I love are the Scottish accents in Biffy Clyro's music. Good point about imitation I agree all the way
The Twilight Sad are well worth checking out - the singer James maintains a strong Scottish accent and even their instrumentals invoke images of Scotland, well for me anyway. Simon Neil from Biffy admits himself that he used to sing in an American accent (probably down to the big influence of American acts) however you can definitely hear that he’s shaken that off to a degree in more recent releases.
Very interesting video and I agree with your point that listening/singing to music in a foreign language is a great way to improve your accent.
You mentioned pop music but didn’t mention that Swedish accents actually impact late 90s/early 00s pop in particular and it’s because of who produced most of those songs.
Trained singers also lose their regional accents because you’re trained to enunciate & project every syllable so you can be heard. It helps the music sound crisp & full-bodied. So while Broadway is in NYC, a city notoriously non-rhotic, most singers in most roles will be pronouncing their Rs.
What are examples of Swedish influenced pop singing accents in the early 2000’s?
Few extra bits to weight in as a vocalist who also has a VERY strong yorkshire accent.
A key element of singing is choosing your key vowels correctly to make notes easier to sing or keep the tone consistent while also over-articulating a lot of sounds, particularly on higher notes because if I sing something say in the 5th octave in my natual accent, it would be incomprehensibe. The sounds need to be exaggerated a lot more which I think is why singing accents are is seen as more americanised since it overlaps a lot more with the ways to get a clearer singing tone for those higher areas where music has shifted to a lot over the past few years (think about how many high notes in songs you can think of verses people singing notable bass notes). Its what I love about singing a lot of british style rock & indie music since there is less of a focus on the belting and instead leaning into the accent to hammer home the message. Singing classics from artic monkeys, the courteeners, and so on are some of my favourite options since they allow me to overdo my own accent and its simply just good fun
Every one of Dave’s videos is endlessly fascinating
Very good video! I had noticed on my own that people tend to sing (at least in English) with pretty much the same accent. I hadn't realized that it's more based on Southern US English. Occasionally, I hear people sing in their regional accent rather than following the general trend, and it's a bit jarring at first. But I like it once I get used to it.
Thanks for sharing!
I always wondered about the different pronunciation of "can't" and "can" in British (I'm American). I had this discussion with a British ex-boyfriend years ago about the song "Rock DJ" by Robbie Williams. There's a line "when you CAHN't get a girl but your best friend CAN," and I thought it was weird how can't was pronounced differently than can. It's interesting to hear more about the quirks of language. Fascinating video!
Brits say Kant, as in Emmanuel.
@@mattwilson50 Are you expecting most Americans to know Emmanuel Kant? Hah! I know that folks from Northern England say it differently than those down south (I can never remember which says it which way, though).
Very wonderfully explained and articulated. Often wondered about this and figured it was genre related. Great share!
It's interesting cuz when I sing, as a singer and songwriter myself, I tend to sing by default in a Southern American accent (I am from Canada and have never been to the south) in imitation of the many southern folk, rock, and country singers I listen to and learn to play a lot. It is so default I have to consciously sing with my own accent a lot of the time. One of the things I noticed felt really strong when I started learning to sing in an Irish accent in Irish folk music, is that I actually pronounced the rhotics like an American/Irish person. Despite the fact that my native accent is rhotic. Something about the way I say the line "looked like a hundred guns fell on me" in my typical Zoomer Calgarian accent just doesn't hit as hard as Ian Noe's original vocals sung in a Kentucky accent.
Notably, Al Jourgenson, an American based in Chicago, started his career with Ministry singing with a fake British accent. Ministry at the time sounded like trendy British synth-pop and so he made his accent match it. He dropped the accent as the band evolved into an industrial-metal sound.
Well done though the two examples at the end, Springsteen and Streisand, sound to me as if they’re singing in their own accents, New Jersey and Brooklyn.
As a person born in London and having had a Brit accent til my teens and then having moved to the US and now having no trace of that accent I can say a couple things. When vowels are elongated they sound more American, hence the loss of accent. Also, hard R's help articulate words making them more rhythmic than soft R's. Also, there's the influence in rock and pop that stems from American blues and jazz.
How early in your teens? Was it a conscious effort or did it just happen?
@@kristinazubic9669 I actually moved from London to Hawaii when I was 7, then moved back from 12 to 13. I had an American accent when I moved back but it took me about 2 months to revert back to my native accent when I was 12. It definitely didn't happen consciously. Funny thing was, after about 6 months being back in London I talked to my cousins in Hawaii on the phone and to me they sounded like dumb southerners. The elongated vowels made them sound like they were mentally slow even though I knew that wasn't the case. I found it funny at the time, still do, especially since I have an American accent now.
Thank you for crediting rock and pop coming from jazz and blues. It seems people don’t know or forgot.