McAlester News-Capital, McAlester, OK

Breaking News

The Buzz

November 27, 2012

Slate's Explainer: Why do British singers sound American?

By L.V. Anderson The Washington Post

For the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall, English singer Adele recorded a song with the same name. Though Adele speaks with a strong London accent, her singing voice sounds more American than British. Why do British vocalists often sound American when they sing?

Because that's the way everyone expects pop and rock musicians to sound. British pop singers have been imitating American pronunciations since Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones began recording in the 1960s. These musicians were largely influenced by the African-American Vernacular English of black American blues and rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry, but their faux-American dialects usually comprised aspects of several American dialects. Imitating an American accent involved both the adoption of American vowel sounds and rhoticity: the pronunciation of r's wherever they appear in a word. (Nonrhoticity, by contrast, is the habit of dropping r's at the end of a syllable, as most dialects of England do.) Sometimes Brits attempting to sing in an American style went overboard with the r's, as did Paul McCartney in his cover of "Till There Was You," pronouncing saw more like sawr.

Linguist Peter Trudgill tracked rhoticity in British rock music over the years and found that the Beatles' pronunciation of r's decreased over the course of the 1960s, settling into a trans-Atlantic sound that incorporated aspects of both British and American dialects. The trend also went in the opposite direction as new genres developed: American pop-punk vocalists like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day took on a British-tinged accent to sound more like seminal artists such as Joe Strummer of the Clash. Contemporary singers continue to adopt various accents according to their genre; Keith Urban, who is Australian, sings country music with a marked American Southern accent. A recent study suggests that the default singing accent for New Zealand pop singers utilizes American vowel sounds, even when the singers aren't trying to sound American, perhaps because today's singers were brought up listening to American (and imitation-American) pop vocals.

Even when singers aren't trying to imitate a particular vocal style associated with a genre, regional dialects tend to get lost in song: Intonation is superseded by melody, vowel length by the duration of each note, and vocal cadences by a song's rhythm. This makes vowel sounds and rhoticity all the more important in conveying accent in song.

          

 

Text Only | Photo Reprints
The Buzz
Seasonal Content
AP Video
Fmr. TWA Flight 800 Investigators Want New Probe Raw: Heat, Spurs Back on Court Ahead of Game 7 Dolce and Gabbana Convicted of Tax Evasion Paris, Prince Depositions Used in Jackson Trial Coiffed Cattle Get Their Close-up In Berlin, Obama Channels Cold War Activism Police at Patriots Tight End's Home for 2nd Day Fed Suggests Bond Purchases Could Slow AP: DOJ Broke Own Rules Seizing Phone Records Raw: Baby White Rhino Debuts at Australian Zoo Time Lapse: Rebuilding Bridge Post-collapse Ohio Woman Accuses 3 of Holding Her Captive Hunt for Ex-Teamster Boss Hoffa's Remains Ends Aug. Trial Set for Ohio Man in Triple Kidnapping Car Crash in NYC's East Village Injures 8
NDN Video
Men's Warehouse fires Zimmer, founder and face of company Rihanna Hits Fan With Microphone Obama Renews Call for Nuclear Reductions Exclusive: Locklear & Seymour Lock Lips Miami Heat Wins in Overtime Raw: Arizona Wildfire Scorches 8 Square Miles Fists, chairs fly in restaurant brawl Journalist Michael Hastings Dies in Fiery Hollywood Crash Hairy Leg Stockings Aim to Deflect Male Attention Inside Kim Kardashian's Premature Labor Three Charged for Enslaving Mother and Daughter Raw: Huge Fire Near Yosemite National Park Spurs' Popovich has no problem with Spurs' intensity RAW: NSA Director Says 50 Plots Foiled Paige Butcher Scorches on Hawaii Beach Video: worst way to load cargo onto a plane Never-before-seen footage of '08 Times Square bomber Obama: NSA Secret Data Gathering 'Transparent' WATCH IT: Lil Wayne tramples American flag Mariah Carey Looks Beautiful in a Tiny Cut-Out Swimsuit
Parade
Magazine
Click HERE to read all your Parade favorites including Hollywood Wire, Celebrity interviews and photo galleries, Food recipes and cooking tips, Games and lots more.