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human
ELI5: Why do British singers seem to lose their accent when they sing?

For example, the Beatles had a pretty thick accent when they spoke, but their songs don't seem to have that. Is it because they were imitating American blues/rock and roll singers?
gpt
Phonetics and Phonology professor here. It happens because what we call an "accent" has much more to do with suprasegmental traits (such as stress and prosody) than with the pronunciation of individual sounds. When we sing, although we utter the phonemes as we'd do while speaking, the melody of music (which is kind of universal) overlays the normal speech melody.
So it's not the case that British people lose their accent while singing. We all do. A British person could say the same thing about an American singer.