This Welsh singer sounds very Californian:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=q-1zDOuA19c
Is her accent nice?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=q-1zDOuA19c
Is her accent nice?
Can you distinguish UK accent from US when singing?
<<You mean, Icelandic accent ?...>>
No, it's not near Iceland. Iceland is far north of both countries.
No, it's not near Iceland. Iceland is far north of both countries.
People sing with an American accent because most popular music right now started in the US so they follow that. also it opens you up to the 300 million + market of the United States (people in the US don't like foreign English-speaking accents much).
Take British hip-hop. It started out with the NYC/NJ area accent since that's the origin of the style, but now is basically done in really strong British accents. There are plenty of UK bands where they have accents, etc. At this point it's usually just to keep the US market open since being "too British" might make you unexportable pop culture wise... though that might have changed by now, you hear those accents all the time in media in the US.
Take British hip-hop. It started out with the NYC/NJ area accent since that's the origin of the style, but now is basically done in really strong British accents. There are plenty of UK bands where they have accents, etc. At this point it's usually just to keep the US market open since being "too British" might make you unexportable pop culture wise... though that might have changed by now, you hear those accents all the time in media in the US.
Because rock and roll was originally the music of African Americans, AAVE is still an influence on the dialect used in a lot of American rock music, no matter how unlike old time rock and roll it might be.
This is a somewhat different situation in the UK. In the late 70s, British punk rockers sang proudly in their native, working-class dialects, and replaced the AAVE-influenced dialect that had been adopted by singers like Mick Jagger, Robert Plant and Van Morrison in the 1960s and early 70s. This has mostly remained the case today, hence the extremely British sounding Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys and Kele Okereke of Bloc Party,
Of course, then you have Amy Winehouse who sings like a 1960s Detroit soul singer, so it's clearly pretty variable.
This is a somewhat different situation in the UK. In the late 70s, British punk rockers sang proudly in their native, working-class dialects, and replaced the AAVE-influenced dialect that had been adopted by singers like Mick Jagger, Robert Plant and Van Morrison in the 1960s and early 70s. This has mostly remained the case today, hence the extremely British sounding Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys and Kele Okereke of Bloc Party,
Of course, then you have Amy Winehouse who sings like a 1960s Detroit soul singer, so it's clearly pretty variable.
Guest (one of many): Roughly half way between the Icelandic and the Azorean accents, just to complicate matters a wee bit more! ;-)
Did anyone see the Amy Winehouse performance at the 90th birthday bash for Nelson Mandela in Hyde Park, London? That lassie is going to end up in the funny farm that's for sure - she gets loopier by the day. What a muppet. But she does perform well when she tries - what a tragedy.
-have Amy Winehouse who sings like a 1960s Detroit soul singer-
Does she have a Northern cities vowel shift?
Does she have a Northern cities vowel shift?
-But she does perform well when she tries - what a tragedy.-
She's folloween in Whitney Houston's footsteps LOL
she will end up noseless
She's folloween in Whitney Houston's footsteps LOL
she will end up noseless
<<British accent is always obvious, in Beatles' or Rollingstones' songs for example. Some singers like Sophie Elis Baxtor don't even bother to try singing in a nonRP accent.>>
Correction.........some singers like Sophie Elis Baxtor don't even bother to try singing
Correction.........some singers like Sophie Elis Baxtor don't even bother to try singing
I always think that Amy Winehouse sounds like Janice off Friends or that woman from The Nanny trying to sing.
<<Does she have a Northern cities vowel shift?>>
Umm, no ... I'm referring to Motown here, whose singers didn't typically come from white, suburban neighborhoods.
Umm, no ... I'm referring to Motown here, whose singers didn't typically come from white, suburban neighborhoods.
'British accent is always obvious, in Beatles' or Rollingstones' songs for example. Some singers like Sophie Elis Baxtor don't even bother to try singing in a nonRP accent.'
'Backstreet Boys clearly sing in American accent.'
Most people just sound like where they're from with a kind of pseudo american accent. BUT it seems like a lot of Brits retain slightly british pronunciations (or really british ones - ever listened to Lily Allen?)
'Backstreet Boys clearly sing in American accent.'
Most people just sound like where they're from with a kind of pseudo american accent. BUT it seems like a lot of Brits retain slightly british pronunciations (or really british ones - ever listened to Lily Allen?)
<<Britney Spears also sings in American accent, doesn't she?>>
Sometimes she even _talks_ with an American accent when she gets tired of her "British" accent.
Sometimes she even _talks_ with an American accent when she gets tired of her "British" accent.
It really depends on the singer. Some British singers and bands are completely indistinguishable from American ones, and you pretty much have to read the liner notes to tell the difference. (Def Leppard. Robert Palmer. Amy Winehouse. Annie Lennox. Jesus and Mary Chain. The Kinks.) Others sing with strong accents that are incredibly obvious. Usually it's the strange vowels that give them away (strange for me, anyway -- Psychedelic Furs. Massive Attack. Depeche Mode. The Proclaimers. The Cranberries, if we can throw the Irish into the mix).
The same could be said for some American bands -- instead of the sort of generic in-between singing accent that many people have described (sort of semi-rhotic), you can tell by the quality of their final R's and certain vowel sounds that they are, without a doubt, American.
The same could be said for some American bands -- instead of the sort of generic in-between singing accent that many people have described (sort of semi-rhotic), you can tell by the quality of their final R's and certain vowel sounds that they are, without a doubt, American.