Footnotes: Pop music in the US style
Natalie Robehmed

Last Updated: August 07. 2010 4:42PM UAE / August 7. 2010 12:42PM GMT


The Rolling Stones are one of the groups accused of singing in an American accent. Bru Garcia / AFP Photo

For years, musicians around the world have been mocked for affecting an American accent. Artists from the British Rolling Stones to the Canadian Shania Twain have been suspected of adopting an American twang to curry favour in the US. Yet according to a new study, singing in an American accent is the most natural way to carry a tune.

The researcher Andy Gibson says it’s all down to the difference between speaking and singing and the way in which Americans round off words. Mr Gibson, of the Auckland University of Technology, studied the voices of New Zealand singers and found that even if participants spoke with strong Kiwi accents, they would sing the same words with an American twang.

Gibson said: “There were huge differences between the sung and the spoken pronunciation of the same words.

Consider the difference between “I” (spoken) and “ah” (sung), “girl”, pronounced without the “r” in speech and with the “r” in singing, and “thought” with rounded lips in speech versus “thart” with unrounded lips in singing”.

Gibson stated that his research suggested an American-influenced accent is the default when singing pop songs, and added that: “The American accent doesn’t stick out in singing because we are so used to hearing it”. He suggests that the American singing voice should be called the “pop music accent” instead.

[www.thenational.ae]

I think this has indeed become the normal way of singing since sound recordings were first made and therefore copied to become known as standards.
Songwriters offered a song to known singers so to speak and once the style was established, everbody else assumed songs had to sound that way.
Rock and Roll came out of America so again the style was copied in an American accent.
Prior to this music was more colocual or folk orientated, regional accents were used in music halls all over Britain towns and cities, and folk clubs more locally.
To a certain extent the folk club circuit remains and songs are still sung in their traditional accents.
Music halls no longer exist, killed off by Television variety type shows doing standard interpritations.
Of course some acts have been succsessfull fusing traditional accents in the mainstream,London have Chas and Dave as an example they called their style Rockney,a mixture of rock and cockey, works for some people but others find it odd.
The Proclaimers from Scotland use their own Scotish accents,Catatonia from Wales used Cerys Matthews's Welsh accent with some appeal,same could be said for Ronan Keating singing in an Irish accent while singing mainstream songs.
These are a few examples of acts trying to get out of the so called American singing accent, but the observation is that it is only a few make it a lasting example.
The same scenario could be applied to Latin music to a certain extent, original Spanish having a simular affect.
I'm no expert on any of this ,it's just my personal take on it.

We invented it. Sing it our way!

On the other hand, there are a few Yanks who have been accused of singing in a fake Brit accent, Robert Pollard to name one.

It just became part and parcel of the idiom. It's almost as though "western popular music" was a geographical area and all the residents have a regional accent ;^)

This is interesting, I have thought about this before when somehow it occured to me that David Bowie pronounces "let's dance" the american way although he is British. Hard to imagine the song being sung differently though.