I'm an occasional singer in a rock band. Being a non-native speaker, I wanted to make my pronunciation a bit more "orderly", by adopting a precise accent as a target. So I ended up creating my own, that I call (a bit pretentiously) the Standard Pop Accent. It's not very original, more of an a posteriori standardized version of the way rock and pop singers tend to sing.
As you know, most British singers in pop and rock music use an American accent, or a sort of part-British hybrid, with a few Southern and AAVE elements thrown in. So I cherry-picked features based on personal habits and preferences. Keep in mind that this accent is only supposed to be used for singing.
I took inspiration from my favorite singers (which include Roger Daltrey, Ian Gillan, Rob Halford...), and from these pages:
- TvTropes : International Pop Song English
- English Speech Services: Our Favourite Wince and Two Directions
- Mr Shibata: A Happy Medium---International Pop Song Accent
Consonants
My Standard Pop Accent is non-rhotic. I find it easier to sing that way. /r/ is an alveolar approximant, as in England.
As in American English, /t/ is flapped between vowels, and sometimes deleted after /n/.
Present participles may have an alveolar nasal instead of the velar (that is, <-in'> instead of <-ing>), as in Southern accents.
As in British English, the yod is kept even after alveolars. This is a personal preference.
Vowels
As in AmE, I use the TRAP vowel in BATH. The TRAP vowel [æ] is an open front vowel rather than near-open; except before nasals, where it's a tense [ɛə].
LOT is normally [ɑ] (but see "the LOT conundrum" below). A close-to-cardinal [ɔː] serves for THOUGHT, CLOTH, NORTH and FORCE.
FACE and GOAT are narrow diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] (easier to sing than the wide diphthongs [ɛɪ] and [əʊ] of Southern British English). FLEECE and GOOSE are near-monophthongs [iː] and [ʉː]. PRICE may also be a near-monophongal [aː], as in American Southern accents.
Weak syllables keep the distinction between [ɪ] and [ə] (the weak-vowel merger goes against my habits). Also, happY has the KIT vowel [ɪ], not the FLEECE one.
Everything else is pretty much what you'd expect.
KIT ɪ
DRESS ɛ
TRAP æ / ɛə
LOT ɑ
STRUT ɜ
FOOT ʊ
BATH æ / ɛə
CLOTH ɔː
NURSE əː
FLEECE iː
FACE eɪ
PALM ɑː
THOUGHT ɔː
GOAT oʊ
GOOSE ʉː
PRICE aɪ ∼ aː
CHOICE ɔɪ
MOUTH aʊ
NEAR ɪə ∼ ɪː
SQUARE ɛː
START ɑː
NORTH ɔː
FORCE ɔː
CURE ʊː
happY ɪ
lettER ə
commA ə
The LOT conundrum
There's one thing I'm really not sure about: the LOT vowel. Specifically, its relationship with START. Non-rhoticity combined with the father-bother merger means that LOT and START are merged, which I find... odd. Somehow, having hot and heart, god and guard as homophones doesn't sit right with me.
How do non-rhotic Americans, such as New Yorkers and AAVE speakers, deal with this potential homophony? My sources are conflicted about this. According to some of them, there is at least a potential distiction between LOT having a more central [ɑ̈], and START a truly back [ɑ:]. But I would find it hard to make a four-way distinction between [æ, a:, ɑ̈, ɑ:] (for TRAP, PRICE, LOT, START).
To take an example: listen to You Give Love a Bad Name (shut up), particularly to the phrase "Shot through the heart". The singer uses a non-rhotic pronunciation, yet I don't think he has the same vowel in shot and heart. (He's from New Jersey, yet is rhotic in real life).