Why do British Singers Have American Accents?

recently i got asked this question on youtube by daniel skymessa is the english accent in songs the same in speaking i.e do british singers change their accent when they sing this is a great question and a topic i've wanted to cover for ages let's take adele this is what she sounds like when she's speaking there's been a lot of chatter about me just being the host i've seen all of it like why isn't she the musical guest and stuff like that and there's a couple of reasons my album's not finished and i'm also too scared to do both it's a mixture of cockney and receive pronunciation features but this is what she sounds like when she sings [Music] i was hello if after all these years you'd like to okay adele no okay so why is there such a big difference well in this video i'm gonna explore some of the reasons why firstly we have to ask whether all british singers change their accents when they sing and the answer simply is no they don't many singers retain their spoken english accents when they sing but we'll get to those later on first of all let's focus on the people who do change their accent now we've mentioned adele already but there's also elton john mick jagger harry styles little mix uh julie lieber sam smith calvin harris the list could go on some people describe the accent as the mid-atlantic accent which borrows from both american english and british english now a huge part of what makes someone's accent so distinct is their vowel sounds i may say dance someone in the north might say dance someone in america might say dance and when it comes to songs vowel sounds are elongated they're squashed to fit with the rhythm of the music and as such the singer needs to change the way they pronounce many words love is one of the classic words they get stretched out take the beatles love me do love love me do sorry i won't do much singing today but just to show you right love love me do that long elongated love it's changing the sound isn't it interestingly actually the beatles when they sing all you need is love the word love in fact in both songs is said with sort of that received pronunciation [Music] love whereas in their spoken accents paul mccartney and john lennon they would have said love with that uh sound well looking back on her you think the guy was totally in love with her so there you can see a changing of accent now unfortunately because of copyright i can't use the original music in this video but i'm going to put a link to all the songs that i reference in the description below so click those links and listen to the songs as i reference them now just like vowel sounds consonants are another great indicator of an accent i say horrible louis tomlinson says horrible horrible horrible decision now in music the difference in consonant sounds isn't as marked or pronounced as vowels but there are some consonants where you can really hear a difference particularly the t sound in ed sheeran's galway girl he uses pretty much his spoken english accent throughout the song but then when it gets to the chorus he says pretty little go away girl baby i just wanna dance pretty little so he changes the sound and he uses what we call an american flap t that's where the t kind of sounds like a d so it's little pretty little now why does he do that well probably because it helps to smooth the sound um it's much easier to say pretty little than pretty little well at least i think it's easier so even though he's using his normal spoken english accent in this rest of the song it's easier for him to say pretty little galway girl so we've talked about how vowels and consonants make our accents distinct from other accents also our stress and intonation patterns affect the way that we speak hugely respected linguist david crystal made this observation a song's melody cancels out the intonation of speech and the beat of the music cancels out the rhythm of the speech so it's no wonder that when someone like adele sings it sounds very different to her spoken accent we also have to consider how singers have to stress syllables to fit the words into the music now it might seem strange to you that singers change their accent so much you might be asking why do they do it beyond the linguistic aspects we've already looked at there are other factors that we need to consider many of these british singers would have grown up listening to american music and as they are learning to sing themselves they are influenced by the accents that they're hearing and this will in turn have shaped the way that they sing and the accents that they use there's also a case for british singers mimicking what they've heard in american music for example the rolling stones the beatles cliff richard they all mimicked blues and rock and roll that came across from america and that changed the way that they sung that changed their accents to a certain degree we have to consider commercial reasons that mid-atlantic accent is much more recognizable to millions and millions of people around the world and therefore it would have more commercial appeal just imagine the beatles singing a hard day's night but in a west country accent it's been a hard day's night and i've been working like a dog yeah it doesn't quite have that multi-platinum feel to it does it look at one direction i analyzed all five members accents and they have different distinct accents and you can really hear where they are from but when they all sing together you'd have no idea and that's probably because they've identified that this mid-atlantic accent has more commercial appeal and therefore it suits their purposes much better now having said all that there are some singers that choose to retain their spoken english accents alex turner from the arctic monkeys lily allen the proclaimers stormzy uh chas and dave my personal favorites they all choose to retain their spoken accent but why do they do that well there are several reasons one could be that bands artists choose to root their music in the place that they're from to have some sense of authenticity the arctic monkeys are a great example of this let's take their early hit mardi bum now not only are there features of a yorkshire accent in there boom that oh sound and up up up and away [Music] but we've also got an example of slang local sheffield slang mardi being kind of moody so not only is the pronunciation but the vocabularies rooting their music in sheffield and sheffield and yorkshire was a huge part of their early identity and so that would have been the reason why and i guess to them it's authenticity they did a song called fake tales of san francisco where they talk about a band trying to sound like they're from san francisco but they're from rotherham another town in yorkshire whereas for the rt monkeys they sounded like they're from sheffield because they're from sherfield and that there is that's being authentic lily allen did the same thing with her london twang on her hit smile she used a glottal t on little and on mental and again that really rooted her music in the city [Music] and that was a part of her identity which you could argue is for commercial purposes of course um but it's also just linking her to the place that she's from and therefore that's where her music is from we also have to consider that some genres of music are synonymous with certain accents for example american country music predominantly uses a texan accent here in britain grime and hip-hop artists mainly use multicultural london english though of course there are examples of other accents but that's the predominant one that's used and again that's linking the music to the location it's almost as if the accent is as important to the music as the melody the rhythm and the instrumentation one area of music that i love hearing accent is in football chance you wouldn't think that 30 000 people all with their own individual accents would sound the same but strangely when they come together you can hear one distinct accent in this chant sung by tottenham hotspur fans who are from london you can hear the cockney features the dropping of the h on ease and arry uh you've also got the wide vowel sound of kane and also that one he's one of our own well if that was the north of england it'd be one one of our own but because it's the south of england one so even in that short chart you can hear the features of a cockney accent if you'd like to learn more about british accents in particular with musicians then you can check out these two videos one is with harry styles and the other one is with adele also if you're interested i have written a book all about british english we talk about british accents british slang and so much more the link is in the description below but until next time guys this is tom the chief dreamer saying goodbye

Channel: Eat Sleep Dream English

Views: 85,019

Rating: 4.9737458 out of 5

Keywords: why do british singers have american accents, american accent, british accent, singing accent, eat sleep dream english, why do british singers sound american, adele accent, ed sheeran accent, Paul McCartney accent, english accent, accent, learn english

Id: WuK4r3k6iTQ

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021