The Beatles purposefully tried to sound American to break in the US. Or did they?
I decided to find out the truth behind the claim that British singers often change their accents to sell more records.
The other day on Instagram, I posted a story about the supergroup The Jaded Hearts Club’s new track “Love’s Gone Bad”:
A British friend of mine replies to my story with a DM: “Miles [Kane — the singer in said song] is sounding very American on this one” Miles Kane is a British singer from Liverpool, in case you don’t know.
As a Brazilian who is taught herself English at a very young age, accents and languages in general interest me. So I had another listen to the song:
“I don’t think he sounds American, perhaps he just has a softer accent? But it could be my foreign ears.”
My friend then goes on about how he’s saying the word “bad” with a “bed” sound rather than an open A vowel. Disclaimer: I’m not a linguist so I don’t know the actual sound names. You’re probably not a linguist too, so I’ll try to exemplify the sounds I mean so you can “hear” them.
He then gives me another apparently classic example of a British band that sound American when they sing. And after some research, I figured out that this band often gets accused of that. The band in question is: The Beatles.
It made me wonder: Why would they do that? Were they pressured by their record label? Were American accents more acceptable because there weren’t many big British rock groups at the time?
Suddenly, I found myself typing on Google, “why do the Beatles sing with an American accent?”. But then I soon realised I was asking the wrong question. The matter of the fact here is: “Do the Beatles sing with an American accent?”
But wait, what defines an American or a British accent?
When my friend accused Miles Kane of sounding American because of how he was pronouncing his vowels, he was taking into consideration only one of the elements of a British accent.
Perhaps it’s harder for natives to notice this, but there are many sounds that make an accent distinctively British. Yes, the open A vowel is definitely a strong indication, specially if you consider the received pronunciation (that posh London accent often perceived as being the British accent).
However, another distinctive sound is the R sound, like in “party” being pronounced as “pahty”. How about the glotal sound in words like “pretty” (which end up sounding almost like “pree-ee”)?
We could also go into the specificities of the different accents found in Britain. Both Miles Kane and the Beatles are from Liverpool and they do tend to pronounce their vowels differently to the received pronunciation. For example, Liverpudlians pronounce the word “bath” closer to a “beth” sound).
Which leads me to my second point: Why do we think the Beatles sounded American?
During my research, I came across this linguist — who identifies herself simply as Karen — and she dissected the Beatles’ songs in search for evidence of whether they actually sang with an American accent or not. And she makes a very interesting point:
“So there are some American features, but it’s nowhere near as extensive as the list of British features. Why do so many people seem to think that the Beatles “sound” American? As shown in the “Liverpoolness” section, there were some substantiated instances of Americans thinking that the Beatles did not sound English.”
As a foreigner who teaches English to other foreigners I can tell you that non-British people tend to associate the British accent to what we call “the BBC English” or “the Queen’s English” — although I personally think Her Majesty has a German twang to her accent.
So when the American audience did not find those open A vowels and other distinctive features of the BBC English accent, they immediately associated the Beatles’ accent as being closer to an American accent.
Another important factor highlighted by the linguist is that intonation is an important feature to distinguish accents. In singing, however, this feature is not present so it makes it harder for listeners to perceive an accent or another.
Remember when Alex Turner, from the UK band Arctic Monkeys, was accused of sounding like an old, California-born cowboy?
Let’s bring our discussion back to modern times. We have Sheffield band. the Arctic Monkeys, with six number one albums in the UK and a rather impressive collection of awards and speeches:
The content of this particular 2014 speech is pretty intriguing in itself but it was Alex Turner’s accent that caught Vice’s attention. “Why Alex Turner Now Sounds Like An Old Cowboy”, they asked. In their article, they compare the video above to an interview from earlier in their career with a younger, less eloquent and, dare I say, less confident Alex Turner.
The conclusions drawn by British voice and accent specialist and lecturer Marina Tyndall, consulted by Vice in this article, highlight another feature of the contemporary British accents.
“He does ‘flap’ some of his ts in phrases such as ‘in which it exists’ and ‘better than ever’, but this feature, in isolation, is not solely a North American English one — it appears in plenty of contemporary UK accents. And he could scarcely sound more Sheffield on ‘make its way back through the sludge’!”
That’s something we tend to forget. Languages and accents are fluid. Several external factors can influence them and the way you or an entire generation sounds, like the media content they consume or the presence of foreign accents in their environment.
There’s also an internal factor that may have impacted Alex’s accent: age. When the Arctic Monkeys released their first album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, in 2006, Alex Turner was 20 years old. After nearly a decade and hundreds of interviews, you could expect his tone of voice, eloquence and even confidence to change.
But is it that hard to imagine that some British artists do resort to changing their accents to fit in?
Some artists have admittedly changed their singing accent as they felt pressured to sound less British or to not let their social class come through in the way they speak. Coincidentally or not, the two most famous examples are from pop acts.
In an interview to the Mirror, Liam Payne, one of the 5 voices of X Factor UK winner and pop sensation One Direction, admitted that their record label encouraged them to sound more American.
“I don’t think you can really sing in a British accent. I think it’s a bit hard and sometimes a bit forced.”
Meanwhile, Hereford-born singer Ellie Goulding admitted to consciously changing her accent in the beginning of her carrer because she was concerned about her underprivileged background coming through in the way she spoke:
“I became fixated on speaking well. I felt like people just knew I was from a council house and that I was poor because of the way I spoke.”
In a nutshell, why do we keep saying that British artists lose their accent when they sing?
Summing up, I found three main reasons why British artists get constantly accused of changing their accents:
- British singers are accused of sounding American when they have regional accents that are not well known or close to the received pronunciation and/or when they’re adopting some American sounds which are getting engrained into contemporary British accents.
- Intonation is a feature of speech which helps identify accents and it’s not present when one is singing.
- There’s also an element of ageing, male voices getting deeper and singers in general becoming more experienced in interviews and sounding more eloquent.
- Particularly in the pop industry, artists may feel inclined or pressured to change their accent to disguise their origins or to blend in.
But I’d also like to add another point:
5. I feel like there’s also an element of singers who come from working class environments and managed to break into stardom receiving criticism for distancing themselves from their roots. This often comes in the form of, “they don’t tour their hometown anymore, they forgot where they from” but it can also translate into a claim that they’re changing their accents to sell more records.
So, do you still think the Beatles changed their accent to appeal to an American audience?
