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[drohne]

lots of pop and rock singers from all over the world affect the pronunciations of black american roots musicians. and honestly it's just as artificial when most americans do it as when brits do it.

i don't think people do it very consciously -- i used to play in a band, and my first instinct was to sing in some phony mick jagger voice. it took effort to sing unaffectedly.

 

[James Power]

Because it would sound like shite.

 

[gblues]

This is something I have never understood.... Bands/Singers from the UK speak completely different from how they sing?? can anyone explain this?
is this something they are trained to do? how do they go from British accent to American in seconds..

Well, we've already discussed that this is not universally true, but you've basically got 2 factors:

1) Practice. Anyone can sing with any accent they've practice for any length of time. I.e. when I'm doing my horrible Scottish accent, I can still carry a tune. See also: Robert Preston singing "Chim-chiminney." Or, in reverse, any episode of "House."

2) Formal singing training generally stresses pronunciation of vowels and discourages holding out consonant sounds or hard vowels. For example, If you are holding out the word "hate," you would usually hold a soft 'e' (as in bled') and complete the hard vowel at the very end; effectively: heeeeeeeeeeeeeeyt instead of hayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyt.

 

[temp]

Yet the OP posting his generalization without evidence is somehow valid to you? That makes no sense.
If the OP had something to backup his argument then I agree that posting a few examples wouldn't be much of a counterargument, but examples and listening to British bands daily is a stronger argument than what the OP has given.

I don't know how long we can reasonably carry out this conversation. I don't really expect the OP to provide a very strong argument in favor of his claim that the British sing like Americans; I think he's taking it for granted that people generally acknowledge this (whether you and I do or not) and he wants to talk about why it is. It seems like quite a few people do actually agree that people from the UK sing with a different accent, whether that accent should be called "American" or not. I don't think anyone in this thread has the position that ALL British people sing like Americans, and that's where you went wrong trying to point out Arctic Monkeys as proof that there are British singers with British accents. I think I'm done talking about this, though.