Boards
Singing with an accent
Do you think it's important whether or not a singer sings in the same accent he or she speaks with? Does it bother you at all? Do you think it's somehow "fake" to sing with an accent that's not your own?
I read an interview recently with Roddy Woomble - I think it was on DiS, actually - where he kind of dismissed early Idlewild (especially 'Captain') partly because he was trying too hard to sound like Tom Barman from dEUS, but I love the way he sang on those early records - to me, that's just Roddy Woomble's voice, and I don't care what accent he actually speaks in. Know what I mean?
(I'm also interested partly because I'm a singer who's always sung with a kind of Americanised accent, and there's been a few times where it's been (negatively) commented on. I do understand why people might not like it, but I've tried singing in an 'English' accent and if anything it sounded even more contrived - almost cockney, which I'm most certainly not. My speaking accent, meanwhile, is home counties-neutral with a healthy dollop of Suffolk thrown in on the ol' vowels there, buh. And I'm not about to start singing with a Suffolk accent just to "keep it real".)