For the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall, English singer Adele recorded a song with the same name. Though Adele speaks with a strong London accent, her singing voice sounds more American than British. Why do British vocalists often sound American when they sing?
Because that’s the way everyone expects pop and rock musicians to sound. British pop singers have been imitating American pronunciations since Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones began recording in the 1960s. * These musicians were largely influenced by the African-American Vernacular English of black American blues and rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry, but their faux-American dialects usually comprised aspects of several American dialects. Imitating an American accent involved both the adoption of American vowel sounds and rhoticity: the pronunciation of _R_s wherever they appear in a word.
Even when singers aren’t trying to imitate a particular vocal style associated with a genre, regional dialects tend to get lost in song: Intonation is superseded by melody, vowel length by the duration of each note, and vocal cadences by a song’s rhythm. This makes vowel sounds and rhoticity all the more important in conveying accent in song.
Somewhat related: It’s Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
In November 1972, Italian pop star Adriano Celentano released a song that hit No. 1 in his home country, despite the fact it wasn’t performed in Italian.
It also wasn’t performed in English.
In fact, it wasn’t performed in any language at all.
The song, called “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” was written to mimic the way English sounds to non-English speakers.
Celentano, now 74 years old, says that he wanted to break down language barriers and inspire people to communicate more.
“So at a certain point, because I like American slang — which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian — I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate,” he says. “And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn’t mean anything.”
The song has been characterized as everything from Euro-pop, funk, house and even the world’s first rap song — none of which were Celentano’s intention.