The reasons are definitely historical, I think. In the fifties and sixties the UK took all its musical cues from the American Blues, Rock 'n' Roll, Country and Soul groups, which we embraced wholeheartedly.
It was one of the great inferiority complexes of human history and it has a deep and convoluted history which is too long to go into in detail.
The USSR and the USA had both emerged as the 20th century's super powers while the previous world power that had smacked up half the world {America, Australia, India, china, much of Africa, lots of Europe......} for hundreds of years was on it's knees, food rationing it's post war ravaged population {it didn't end until 9 years after the war !}, losing it's empire and looking for the most part, decidedly second rate politically, socially, sportingly......and musically. American servicemen swept the English girls off their feet during the war and after, while so many of the blokes aspired to be like them. Americans were the epitome of "cool". I don't think smoking would have caught on the way it did had it not been for their glamorous association via movies, musicians and pictures.
I suppose to sing those songs in a British accent wouldn't have worked - the audiences wanted to hear the authentic American sound, the culture that we were in love with at the time.
That's true. It's interesting that among the younger UK set, those songs of the blues, rock'n'roll and country idiom really took hold. As they got more into writing their own songs, it just got daft singing about smokestack lightning, route 66, getting your mojo working and hoochie coochie men and bit by bit, more and more of the lives of the writers like Pete Townshend, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Phil May, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Dick Taylor, John Entwistle, Graham Gouldman, Ray Davies and a bit later, guys like Syd Barrett, Pete Sinfield, Eddie Pumer, David Bowie, Ian McDonald, Pete Daltrey, Jim Cregan, Pete Brown, Brian Godding, Marc Bolan, Kevin Westlake and Robert Plant bled into the songs and this, after 1965 and Kinks songs like "A well respected man" was reflected in the way these songs were being sung. Suddenly in 1965/6, Ringo is sounding like a moany Scouser on "What goes on" and a cheery Scouse boozer on "Yellow Submarine", Mick Jagger sounds like a cockney pub shouter on "Mother's little helper" and the backing vocals of the Stones' "Dandelion" and "We love you", as well as the leads are English with a capital E...... By then of course, America had become enamoured of all things British and thus began the great to~ing and fro~ing that has been a feature of the music scene ever since ~ in fits and starts. British was now cool and for a long while, the inferiority complex was buried.
It took a concerted effort for British groups to step outside that
I think it was about growing confidence. Few of those Britrockers had been out of the country prior to 1964. And as Keith Richards put it, life in the 50s was in black and white but at some point in the mid 60s, it became technicolour. Singing their own songs about their own lives, their own pasts, their own feelings and their own
places was inevitable as were the musical styles from their childhoods that they drew on to mix with the American stuff and create new sounds and directions that were uniquely British. And more and more, you'd get songs about Penny Lanes, Strawberry fields, "Only a Northern song", gnomes, scarecrows, sky children, English parks, Waterloo sunsets, the Isle of Wight, very English characters like Arnold Layne, SF Sorrow, Polythene Pam, Tommy, Uncle Ernie, Jenny Artichoke and Mrs Murphy's Budgerigar, English cries of "oi !" {Mother's little helper} and "Eh up !" {Bungalow Bill}, tales of fingering girls {Penny Lane}, masturbating {Pictures of Lily}, Posing {Dedicated follower of fashion}, bullying {Cousin Kevin}, sexual abuse of kids {Fiddle about} etc, all very English pastimes which were now being talked about and also appearing were orchestral instruments, orchestras and choirs, used in an ever so British way.
In the same way that the American songs handled by Brits would've sounded a bit, well,
off, in English accents, more and more of the homespun songs by the Brit rockers would've sounded weird in anything other than a more British vocal sound.
By the time of punk, not being yourself just wasn't acceptable.
Abba - in their singing, they're English. Hear them speak and you know they come from Sveden.
Last week I did a lot of listening to Abba and there's a definite accent in the women's voices. You can hear it clearly in "Waterloo", "Nina pretty ballerina", "I do I do I do" and others but it comes across subtly in some of their big hits. But I only really just heard it last week and I've listened to them since 1974.
I think the way songs are mixed makes a difference too, to how clearly accents come over.
American and British accents when singing are very similar, unless they have a very strong accent that jumps out
Ever since I was a kid, I felt the opposite to that. My sisters and I used to take the piss out of the "yankified" way some British singers sang although I'm not sure why as we loved pop songs and never really thought much about the nationalities of the singers.
and the silly accent bands like The Wurzells have from the UK West country.
I really hated the Wurzels. But I've known a few people that talk just like them ! Oooh arr ooh arr ay !
Even the Irish accents vanish in some music - like U2, emerging just every now and then.
Phil Lynott often sounded Irish in Thin Lizzy as did Jim Lockhart and Barry Devlin in Horslips. A lot of Celtic folk musicians sang in their national accents, like the Battlefield band often sounded like roughneck shipyard Scots while Christy Moore and so many like him {interestingly, not his brother, Barry} sounded more Irish than if they spoke !
I dig the German version of 99 Luftballoons. Love the accent on the singer in German or in English.
Yeah, Nina's a good example of how the accent someone sings in can be almost a distraction from the song. That said, I like the song. The English one.
I have a couple of albums by German bands {Semaja and Maranatha} playing heavy to progressive and singing in German. The language is not the smoothest of them all, but it's often the accents that really stick out and make the language seem so rough.
But different tones fit different genres.
I think this is true. But I wonder if that happens naturally or if it has been conditioned into those that think this.
} and you know, all these years later, I still find him really funny. Neat guitar player too. I love his stupid song, "Funky moped." It's so ridiculous but it is funny and it's a song I love grooving to. I don't know if it was a parody or coincidence but it was in the charts right around the same time as a harder edged Chris Spedding song, "Motorbikin'." Love 'em both and played back to back, it's hard not to at least smile........
I believe both the original and current singer from the band, Journey are both Portuguese. Isn't Portuguese what most Brazilians speak?
It's really important. 
that's )