I've been going through the talent videos that made people cry. A good part of the crying is the contestant's backstory. Some of the stories are awful. The show plays the awfulness to its fullest. Very sappy, judges go onstage and hug the sobbing contestant. But this backstory is not so bad.
That was the motivation for viewing a few dozen videos but it is not what arrests my attention with all of them.
The young man starts out with a distinctly British accent. I made a bet with myself that no matter what song he chooses he will drop the accent and switch to sing in a distinctly American accent.
Why will he do this?
Because it's a song and songs attempt to reach directly to your heart and speak soul to soul that is the purpose of these songs and that cannot be done through a facade. Any falseness destroys the intent. He will sing in American accent because American accent is free of bullshit facade. He restores all missing r's that are purposefully dropped for his facade British English, he removes all intrusive r's placed incorrectly for his facade British English, he restores all r's affected by facade British English displaced r syndrome, drops all glottal stop constant substitutions and all consonant elisions, and sings directly to the hearts of his audience by purposefully employing a direct and clear and distinctly American form of speaking, an American accent. It is the only English accent that will work because it is the only one free of nonsense.
Otherwise you get Waltzing Matilda.
Otherwise you get Waltzing Matilda.
Charge: British English is a facade engaged on national scale using language for souls to distance themselves from emotion. And when they want to get real and allow their emotion to tap into realness they drop the facade and sing directly, free of affectation, free of facade by switching to a clear-hearted and clear intentioned American form of English.
That was my bet with myself. Silly bet actually, this is all axiomatic.
Sure enough. The guy goes American sounding to touch the hearts of his audience. They all do. This song would sound ridiculously false in British accented English, its wacky r-displacement and various consonant jackery facade would be too obvious to sing. It cannot be pulled off. I would advise stop being silly altogether, be real always, but that's impossible at this point.
4 comments:
Chip, isn't part of it singing? Think of Roger Daltrey speaking vs singing. His songs sound "American" in accent, but he definitely has an accent when he is speaking. Roger's British accent is not fake (at least I don't think it is) and I am not sure he is trying to sound American as an affect. When he is in key, it sound as it sounds, although part of the American-ness is the nature of the rock blues song style the Who plays.
Waltzing Matilda is more of a speaking song, with lots of Australian bush terms thrown in, so it definitely sounds Cockney-Australian.
Many black singers sound "black" but lots of them don't. If you sing a song straight it (without trying to work the accent) it comes out as it comes out. You get the same things sometimes in country music.
Possibly.
When I first heard Adele she sounded country western to me. Still does. She'd sound ridiculous singing any of her songs with her authentic distancing remote British accent. The video of her driving in the car with the karaoke guy back and forth between her speaking and singing voices is ridiculous. It goes, honesty to facade to honesty to facade to honesty to facade back and forth the whole way ridiculously, remote, intimate, remote, intimate, remote, intimate. That's how it sounds.
I was watching TCM last night and they had trailers for old musicals. I was struck by how many sang with that annoying affection of the 1930s, compared to say Judy Garland singing Over The Rainbow (which does not have it).
I really wish we could go back to restrained singing. Which is the only way to convey deep emotion. Well, maybe not the only way but the most effective. And I think the accent has little to do with whether a singer moves us. The favorite of many American songwriters was, of all people, Fred Astaire, whose accent was middle-of-the-pond and who essentially spoke the songs with just a hint of emotion at their emphasis points. Speaking of Judy Garland, she could really belt out a song but she could also underplay it as in her very effective rendering of A Foggy Day (In London Town).
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