accents are great if 100% legitamate and not made up....

aidam moffat of arab strap has an amazing vice....
johnny fuckface from razorlight has not got an amazing voice
mark e smith has an amazing voice..
the guy from any band sounding like pearl jam and that nasally whine of eddie the eagle vedder hasnt got an amazing voice
kate nash is mockney
beth orton isnt mockney
lily allen is just annoying
as for irish accents.... dolores o riardon and sinead o connor may have legitamite irish accents. i can handle sineads but dolores just sounds awful.

use the voice which lies in your throat, not the voice that lies in your head!

I want her babies.

the fake British accent, once again, is quite annoying.

Phil Collin's singing in Genesis' Illegal Alien is also very annoying.

Yeah most British singers (either in metal/emo bands or that are part of that X Factor karaoke thing) sing in a generic transatlantic accent... but, more recently, I'd say bands singing in an exaggerated regional accent (and using regional colloquiums) are more noticeable.

I'm as Northern as you can be without actually being a whippet wearing a flat cap with flecks of black pudding on it. But when I hear the singer from the Arctic Monkeys singing 'but all of dat is what the point is not', etc, like a pantomime Northerner, I think 'you annoying Northern c*nts'. Then I order a pint of Tetleys.

It's hard to say what is the ideal singing accent. I'd say a natural one which isn't affected in anyway (confusingly, those regional accents are often said to be natural but they're clearly affected). When I'm singing - I'm basically talking in a low, whispery way, like Kevin Shields and a lot of the Scottish indie bands do... that seems about right.

i am presuming that you do know mr sheilds nationality isnt scottish!

They were supposed to be regarded seperately. Shields was born in New York to Irish parents wasn't he? Should I have put a comma inbetween Shields and 'and a lot of'? I'm bad at grammer.

Yeah, that's good points all. It's that fine line between not giving a shit about your accent/ not being able to sing at all (Mark E Smith/ Arab Strap) and over emphasising your accent (Artic Monkeys? I wouldn't know, I've met very few Sheffieldians). Something that always makes me laugh is bands like Napalm Death - you can be so much more convincing in that music if your natural accent is the world-beatingly brilliant Brum accent.

true that. so horrible, especially when it's the accent of your native language that you're hearing.

I saw some bloke doing sort of olde english (or scottish?) folk thing on saturday. I think he linguistically pulled it off well (he was finnish), but god damn it still was a bit dire to watch through.