G-Man wrote:
I've always wanted to ask about singing accents. Why does almost everyone switch to an American accent when singing?
Most people do that - they lose their native accent and default to something that is similar to American. Imagine The Beatles, Adele, ABBA or any number of other heavy accented speakers if they sang the same as they spoke. It's not even a concious thing.
It's down to phonetics apparently, we sing differently than we speak: we slow down, sing out more powerfully and enunciate more clearly than when we speak. Intonation is replaced by melody, vowel length by the duration of each note, and vocal cadences by a song’s rhythm. Dipthongs fall away almost entirely. So
singing has it's own accent - and that just happens to be something similar to (the lazy drawl of) American English.
There is sometimes a case made that our influences all play a part and that most stretch back to early American rock n roll and pop. The Beatles and other British bands being heavily influenced by American blues singers, etc. While this did have an effect, I think it's relatively minor.
Also, saying that everyone sings like an American is incorrect - there are a huge variety of US accents too, so which Americans? Southern, Texas, New York, New England, Appalachian, Midwest, Boston, etc.
