FRANCISCO FERNA.NDEZ (Ed.

SITUACION ACTUAL Y PERSPECTIVAS

DEFUTURO

Studies in English Language and Literature

LENGUA I NGLESA. UNIVERSITAT DEVALENCIA

 PROLOGO
El volumen que ahora ofrecemos es la coleccion de las conferencias y ponen
cias/comunicaciones presentadas en el V Curso internacional de estudios ingle
ses: situaci6n actual y perspectivas de futuro, que se celebro en Valencia del 31
de marzo al 4 de abril de 1998.
El evento retomaba, aunque con importantes modificaciones, cursos similares
organizados ya con anterioridad por el Departamento de Filologfa lnglesa y
Alemana de la Universidad de Valencia. En esta ocasion se abordaron temas que
pueden muy bien considerarse como basicos de los estudios ingleses; es decir:
cuestiones de literatura inglesa, literatura americana, lengua inglesa, lingtifstica
aplicada e ingles para fines especfficos, enmarcando la tematica apuntada en los
varios paradigmas de investigacion y abordando las cuestiones tanto desde la
perspectiva sincronica como diacronica.El curso consistio en
(a) 18 horas de conferencias plenarias que fueron impartidas por catedraticos de
Universidad, especialistas de reconocido prestigio en los contenidos mencio
nados, tanto espafioles como britanicos: E. Alcaraz (ingles para fines especffi
cos), M. Conejero (teatro ingles), T. Cooper (estudios europeos), J. Coy (lite
ratura norteamericana), B. Dietz (literatura canadiense), P. Evans (cine y tele
vision), F. Fernandez (historia de la lengua inglesa), D. Hatley (Literatura
norteamericana), M. Lee (literatura afro-norteamericana), A. Lopez (lingtifsti
ca general), M. McCarthy (analisis del discurso), C. Perez (literatura inglesa),
G. Ross (ingles americano), S. Wells (estudios shakespeareanos); y
(b) otras 18 horns de serninarios en los que se expusieron tambien comunicacio
nes de 30 minutes, sobre cuestiones mas puntuales, a cargo del profesorado de
este departamento, asf como de otros departamentos de varias Universidades
espafiolas: Alicante, Autonoma de Barcelona, Castellon, Cordoba, Jaen, Poli
tecnica de Valencia, etc. Los seminarios se impartieron en sesiones paralelas
(3, y en ocasiones 4, simultaneas), enfocandose tanto hacia los alumnos no li
de los autores, 1999
cenciados (del departamento de filologfa inglesa de la Universidad de Valen
ISBN: 84-370-3929-0 cia, y tambien de otros departamentos), como hacia los alumnos ya licencia
Dep6sito legal: V. 1.068 - 1999 dos
Artes Graficas Soler, S. L. - La Olivereta, 28 - 46018 Valencia
segun podra observarse por el programa del Curso:
Pennock-Speck, Barry (1999) Does accent matter ... in pop music?
In Fernndez Fernndez, Francisco (ed.) Studies in English
Language and Linguistics: Miscelaneous (Volume I). Valencia:
Artes Grficas Soler: 175-183.

DOES ACCENT MAT'fER ... IN POP MUSIC?

Barry Pennock
Universitat de Valencia

1. Introduction

The word "accent" in the title above, understood in the linguistic sense, has a
fairly clear meaning. It refers exclusively to the pronunciation of a language
variety .and not to that variety's grammar or vocabulary. The second term in the
article, "pop", is far from being as straightforward. So before looking at the role
that accent plays in "pop" music, my first step will be to define the word
"popular" or "pop". This is a controversial term, whether it is used to qualify
"music", "literature", "art", or indeed anything else. If we take the definition of
"popular" given by the OED: "Designating music (esp. song) having or regarded
as having a wide popular appeal", it would not be long before the astute reader
would notice that the definition is circular and, therefore, not very satisfactory.
Moreover, the word "popular" has ideological and, without doubt, pejorative
implications. But, we may ask, is not classical music also "popular" in the sense
of the OED definition? This is not the place to theorise about the exact definition
of the concept of "pop" in this century, or its cultural, political or aesthetic
ramifications. Let it suffice to say that here I refer to contemporary music
which is aimed at a large audience and is produced with that purpose in mind. In
this sense it would include classical music such as the "Three Tenors" records.
Shucker's (1994: 3) definition of the term is typical of the way that "pop"
and "folk" are juxtaposed in many discussions on popular music. Pop has often
been contrasted, and unfavourably so, with the latter, which precedes it
chronologically.
'"Popular' is a contested tenn. For some it means simply appealing to the
people, whereas for other it means something much more grounded in or 'of'
the people. The former usage generally refers to commercially produced fonns
 176 BARRY PENNOCK
of popular culture, while the latter is reserved for forms of 'folk' popular
culture, associated with local community-based production and individual
craftspeople. In relation to popular music, for example, this is the distinction
often made between folk music, especially when acoustically based, and the
chart-oriented products of the record companies.
Folk music is as prestigious as classical music and possibly even more
valuable in cultural terms as it reflects the customs and language of a particular
region, ethnic group, or country. However, the authenticity of folk music has
been questioned by many (Shucker, 1994; Negus, 1992; Harker 1980, 1985;
Kiel, 1978). As the title of Barker's 1985 book, Fakesong: The Manefacture of
British "Folksong", suggests, the very existence of this genre is contested. In a
similar vein, Kiel (1978), argues that 'folk' is a bourgeois concept and that 'The
folk' was invented primarily by Goethe and Herder to support their romantic
notions of nationhood. Indeed, currently it is difficult to see "folk" music, or at
least the British variety, as anything more than another product on the shelves of
record retailers throughout the country.
2. Accent and Authenticity
So, if pop music is such a manipulated genre and seemingly divorced from its
audience, is it worth studying the part that accents, which are an authentic
expression of many communities, play in it? My answer is that it is and stems
from the conviction that in pop music accents, whether authentic or not, do
change the way in which pop songs may be received by the audience. The
important question of authenticity in pop music is tackled directly by Negus
(1992). Following Adorno & Horkheimer (1979) he states that consumers of
pop music are aware of the manipulation in pop music but can appreciate the
authenticity of the artists that they admire. In England, accent has always been a
rather immediate way of recognising where a person comes from and what
social class he or she belongs to. It is also seen as a sign of authenticity. A pop
star may be a millionaire but is, in a sense, one of the people, if he or she
maintains his or her original accent. To have a regional or working-class accent
is not indispensable as groups such as Pink Floyd or The Moody Blues have
shown. However, it is, perhaps, significant that these two groups delved into
more esoteric, ethereal music than other groups.
DOES ACCENT MATIER ... IN POP MUSIC? 177
That accent is, or has been, important in the public image of a pop str is
.
evident in the way that several stars have been accused of concocting a reg10nal
accent to gain credibility among their fans. As most consumers of pop are
working-class, there is a need for their stars to be seen as _"one of them'.' John
L ennon's rebellious image of a "workingcclass hero" attacking the establishment
was questioned by Harker (1980: 213):
Put crudely, Lennon's working-class credentials are dubious -grammar sch?ol,
_
art college- however serious his intention to wnte for the peple. In a rruno
_
way it is symptomatic that his 'Scouse' accent came as a surpnse to his father.
'He spoke lovely English. When I heard his scouse accent years later I was
sure it must be a gimmick'. (Davies 1969: 8).
Mick Jagger has also been accused of "putting on" a cockney which did not
tie in with his being a middle-class student who had studied at the London
School of Economics. Coon (1988: 193) sees the putting on of_ an accet as a
.
sign of Jagger's lack of authenticity: "It's no longer possibl; to imagine hm as a
,
man of the people, if he ever was -his yobbo accent doesn t wash anymore
_
If denying that a star has an authentic working-class accent 1s seen as an
assault on their image, this must mean that accents do matter for both pop stars
and for their fans.
3. Popular Musical Genres up to the Sixties
Looking at accent in popular music in detail in the t':entiet century, or een
since the birth of rock 'n' roll in the fifties, would be 1mposs1ble to accomplish
. .
in this article, therefore I have chosen three songs from the s1xt1es. B ut beore
getting into this period I will review very briefly some of the genres of popular
music up to that decade and some of the cultural phenomena relatd to them. A
start must be made with folk music, the oldest of the popular musical genres. It
is easy to forget that at one time all verbal art was conducted in dialect and that
_
.
there were several literary traditions, each connected to a particular geograpcl
variant of English. "The Owl and the Nightingale" from te south-eat, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight" and "Pearl" from the west nudlands are Just the
most well-known of the surviving works. With the appearance o a stadard
.
literature folk tales and folk music inherited the task of telling stones in dialect
and so "folk" music was intimately connected to a geographical area, as well as
178 BARRY PENNOCK DOES ACCENT MATTER ... IN POP MUSIC? 179

to a particular social class. Though the subject matter of many folk songs is the The next invasion of American music, and accents, came with the birth of
same throughout Europe, each geographical area had its own particular way of rock 'n' roll in the fifties and included artists like Bill Haley and the Comets,
delivering songs, which, of course, included dialectal differences and accent. Elvis Presley and others. Elvis imitators such as Cliff Richards, although very
This situation, however, has changed dramatically in recent decades. British in his way, had to imitate American diction. It would have been
Contemporary folk singers, who are not necessarily connected to one particular impossible to sing rock 'n' roll with a RP accent. The imitation of an American
community, have become the guardians of our folk legacy. The most famous accent has often been criticised. The following example is by no means one of
American examples are Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger. It would be difficult to the strongest denunciations that can be found:
argue, however, that they are "folk" singers in the sense described above. The
"Britain has several languages and a multiplicity of accents, but the voice that
term "minstrel", with its connotations of a wandering troubadour, would
dominates British pop is a commercial construct, a phoney diction that says
probably fit better.
more about our slavish relationship to America than it does about popular
The tradition of music sung in dialect was also an important part of a relative diction". (Cosgrove 1987: 16)
of folk songs -working songs such as those sung in the mills of Lancashire or
the coal mining areas in the Durham area after the industrial revolution. Another
venue in which local accents could be heard, often for comic effect, were the
4. Accents in Pop Music in the Sixties
Music Hall theatres which flourished in the second half of the nineteenth
century. The remains of this music hall tradition were still strong enough in the
It was only with the coming of the sixties that authentic British accents could
sixties to inform the style of several sixties pop groups.
be heard from those who worked in the mainstream pop genre. This came about
In the 1920s the influence of musical forms from across the Atlantic was
in a natural way as many groups stopped doing cover versions of American
being felt, although as early as the 1870s minstrelsy was imported from America
songs and started composing their own songs. Most groups sang, at least some
and according to Frith (1998: 48) it "was the first American pop form to leave
songs, without putting on an American accent. Frith (1998: 74) has this to say
its mark on British musical culture". American musical influence has never about The Beatles rendition of rock 'n' roll songs: "The Beatles sang American
disappeared from the musical scene since. However, it was the musical idiom in
music in a Liverpool accent -nasal rather than throaty, detached, passion
this case that was imported more than the language.
expressed with a conversational cynicism". John Lennon was credited with
In spite of the American invasion, in the forties, British singers like Gracie finding an idiosyncratic way of singing American rock 'n' roll songs without
Fields and George Formby, both very popular singers and comedians, talked and
sounding silly.
sang with northern accents. Others like Vera Lynn, the "forces sweetheart"
The use of accent and the rise to stardom of young working-class men has to
during the second World War and Noel Coward, the essence of the effete be seen against the backdrop of a surge in the production of literature and films
upper-class gentleman, had RP accents. To a great extent these singers were
by writers from the working-class or about working-class themes. Sillitoe's
recognised and categorised by their accents. The comedic parts offered to
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958 -film version in 1960), The
Gracie Fields -she never played a romantic lead in any of her films- may have
Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959 -film version in 1962); Keith
had something to do with her "working-class" origins -only ladies with RP
Waterhouse's Billy Liar (1962 -film version in 1963); David Storey's This
accents could play those roles. Similarly, George Formby was always cast as a
Sporting Life (1960 -film version in 1963); Barry Hines' A Kestrelfor a Knave
slightly bumbling but pleasant fool. Thus, the working-class characters of
(1969 -film version "Kes" in 1969). At the same time the working-class were
Music Hall -all heart but a little dim- were carried on in the film careers of these
depicted in an equally thoughtful manner on television; film-maker Ken Loach's
two artists. Noel Coward might also have worked in Music Hall as the "upper
television film "Cathy Come Home" was a sensation. What all of these novels,
class-twit" character who appeared in many acts. Significantly, the only one
plays and films have in common is that they take working-class characters
with a serious image was Vera Lynn whose accent was a moderate form of RP.
 BARRY PENNOCK
180
seriously and there is a feeling that the working-class share a culture, which is
alive and has something to say.
The explosion of working-class artists in the world of literature was mirrored
in the proliferation of groups from all over England. Many of these groups had
started their apprenticeship, so to speak, playing songs by either American rock
'n' roll artists, as in the case of The Beatles or blues artists, the models chosen
by The Rolling Stones, The Animals and The Yardbirds. Blues had arrived in
England as an offshoot of Jazz and had a small but faithful following in the late
fifties and early sixties. So various strands of Afro-American music had
penetrated Britain by the time of the upsurge in British pop. Part of the attraction
of the blues was its "authenticity", here were poor, travelling black bluesmen,
singing in the vernacular about sex and other subjects in a way that had been
taboo in British popular music. Of course, imitating these bluesmen meant not
only getting the guitar riffs just right but the accent and delivery too. This was
the case of Eric Clapton during the time he was with The Yardbirds and John
Mayall's Blues Breakers. However, by the time he joined Cream, he had come to
the conclusion that he was a white man playing and singing rock music. This
kind of evolution was experienced by many British artists who were so
successful that mid-way through the sixties it was British music with a marked
British accent that was sweeping America in what was to be called the "British
invasion" of 1963-1964.
As Cosgrove (1987) remarks, a pseudo American accent was still prevalent in
the eighties but it often lived alongside peculiarly British accents in many songs.
It is these songs that I will look at more closely. One group which made use of
British accents is the Kinks and probably the best is "Dedicated Follower of
Fashion" released in 1966. The song was markedly comic in effect, including a
music hall style chorus. The "upper-class twit" voice at the end of the song was
absolutely essential to get across the inanity of the subject of the song. Ray
Davies, the singer and composer of the song was, however, not a Cockney but
came from one of London's sprawling suburbs.
Another London group, The Small Faces, carried the use of accent even
further in "Lazy Sunday Afternoon" (1968). This song is a masterpiece
combining a "rosy view" of England with a touch of the psychedelic (Moore
1993: 90). The song starts with Steve Marriot singing with a Cockney accent,
including glottal stops, final /1/ sounds turned to a /u/ and the typical Cockney
realisation of the /?/. The overall style of the song mixes optimism with
comedic overtones -the piece of dialogue in the song, between two neighbours
DOES ACCENT MATIER ... IN POP MUSIC? 181
including the use of Cockney and a feigning of an elderly person's voice- is a
brillianttouch. Such accentual posturing harks back to the days when accents
were used for laughs in Music Hall. But at the end of the song, Marriot uses
more of a pseudo American accent and a more serious tone of voice. This is, in
my opinion, not an accident. Accent was still used more or less consciously for
comic effect. When the song gets serious, only the American style accent will
do.
The Scouse accent of the Beatles and other groups from Liverpool were a
trademark during the sixties and constituted part of their charm, especially in the
United States. Nevertheless, The Beatles' accent was much more noticeable in
their interviews than in their songs. Apart from the nasal tone which is a feature
of the Liverpool accent, most of the songs were sung in the mid-Atlantic lingua
franca of pop. One of the exceptions to this is the song "Polythene Pam" from
the Abbey Road album released in 1969. It is one of several tracks on the album
with an air of Music Hall, including McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".
If anything Lennon's Scouse accent in "Polythene Pam" is exaggerated making
the split fricative /1:,_ I and the final syllable of"good-lookin "' really stand out. As
in "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Lazy Sunday Afternoon", it is not by
chance that the use of accent is found in a song which is not meant to be taken
very seriously. The difference with the Lennon & McCartney song and the
others arises because of the sarcastic edge to his voice that comes across. It is
as if Lennon is being more critical of the central character in the song by using
Scouse than would otherwise be the case. Notwithstanding the use of the
Liverpool accent on this track, the rest veer between modified RP and mid
Atlantic. The first track on the album, although not sung with an American
accent, is almost a parody of American English with the ellipsis of the "s" in the
third person singular of all verbs in the present simple as in "he got" and "he
shoot".
5. Conclusions
Since the beginning of the seventies, the tendency has been to go back to the
mid-Atlantic pseudo American accent -with exceptions like the punk groups
such as "The Sex Pistols" and "The Clash". However, it seems that accent has
made somewhat of a comeback in the nineties with bands like "Oasis" and
"Blur". The former are exponents of the Manchester accent while the latter
182 BARRY PENNOCK DOES ACCENT MATIER ... IN POP MUSIC? 183

speak with an "Estuary English" accent which is spreading geographically in the Negus, Keith 1992. Producing Pop: Culture & Conflict in the Popular Music
area of the south east of England. That groups like these have been given the Industry. London, New York, Sydney, Auckland: Arnold.
Shuker, R. 1994. Understanding Popular Music. London: Routledge.
label "Brit Pop" is, perhaps, not only due to the fact that musically their songs
remind us of those from the sixties.
So, does accent matter in pop music? The answer to this question is I think
affirmative, at least in the case of the songs and groups I have mentioned. But,
does accent still matter in this age of global markets in which the consumers
from non-English speaking countries, who often do not perceive the variations
in English that I have mentioned, have become increasingly important for the
record companies? For a record company the objective is to get as many people
from as many markets to buy a record, hence uniformity would seem to be the
direction to take. A check on this is the fact that most bands, even nowadays,
have to sell at a national level to be taken seriously in the global market It is in
this early stage that image, of which accent is a small but important part,
counts. So, accent will continue to matter, on the one hand, as a subtle but
effective way of constructing a singer or group's image, and as a useful tool in
the delivery of songs.

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Frith, S. 1998. Music for Pleasure. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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