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Do Singers Have Accents? Minicast
Grant Barrett
San Diego, California
1532 Posts
(Offline)
1
2008/06/30 - 6:17am

You've heard this happen: A singer belts out a song, and then afterward, she starts talking and you're startled to hear what sounds like a completely different accent. What is it about singing that seems to change some people's accents? A caller from Indianapolis wants to know.

Listen here:

[audio:http://feeds.waywordradio.org/~r/awwwpodcast/~5/322965026/080630-AWWW-do-singers-have-accents.mp3%5D

Download the MP3 here (4.3MB).

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Bill Jackman
2
2008/06/30 - 7:06am

later in the podcast discussion was made of accents for newspeople etc.
Back in the Huntley-Brinkley days, Chet Huntley was reported as having the least offensive accent on television. He came from the Belt Montana. Belt currently has just over 600 people, and I think it was the same size or smaller then. It was rumored that more than a thousand people went to Belt to evaluate the accent. I lived about 25 miles from Belt and several of my friends had great fun making strange sounding accents for the visitors to record

Guest
3
2008/06/30 - 11:21am

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm not sure that I'm convinced that all of the accent equalization (sounding "American") is intentional, although the Beatles apparently did this for marketing purposes. I believe, as Grant also said, that the language of singing music has certain qualities which tend to override spoken language (intonation, stress, rhythm, patterns...) Now, "I'm Henery the Eighth, I am..." sounds quite British - intentionally so, or naturally so? Perhaps we need to ask those singers whose native accents disappear while singing if they are cognizant of this change.

An interesting note - Even though Germans love jazz, the language itself is not known for its jazz repetoire. However, there is a jazz singer from Mannheim, Germany, which has its own distinct local dialect, who sings jazz in this dialect and not in standard German. She was quite popular in the 80's and accepted as a true jazz artist. I believe her name is Jan Fleming. This says something about music's effect on language, and also about the relationship between a gutsy, native dialect and the nature of jazz. A very interesting topic indeed, further exploration of which would shed light not only on the nature of language, but also of music.

oli
4
2008/06/30 - 9:29pm

I listened to all the 60's-70's English bands and deceided that the huge American album market could only be tapped by using Americanized vocals. Robert Plant, Led Zep, only recently recorded with Americans on Raising Sand for the first time. Hearing him speak is extremely painful and incomprehensible at times due to his “accent”. Yet his vocals are as American as...

Joan
5
2008/08/14 - 3:02pm

The singer that has always given me aural whiplash is Jim Nabors. Go-ollllll-y (best I can do to spell "Gomer's" pronunciation of 'golly')!! I know his hillbilly accent is exaggerated when he's in character, but he sounds to me like his singing voice is equally exaggerated in the other direction. Does Mr. Nabors have "normal" accent somewhere between the two that one might hear, say, if one ran into him at the Piggly-Wiggly?

EmmettRedd
859 Posts
(Offline)
6
2008/08/19 - 2:35pm

Hugh Laurie (Dr. Gregory House in House on FOX) amazes me with his lack of accent when in character and how strong it is when he is not.

Emmett

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