how come Brits don't have an accent

[harmonica]

..how come the Brits and Aussies don't have their accents when they sing??...they sound American....there are a bunch of them that I thought were American

 

[Dekster]

..how come the Brits and Aussies don't have their accents when they sing??...they sound American....there are a bunch of them that I thought were American

Usually the melodies cancel out the intonations that are the hallmark of accents

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

..how come the Brits and Aussies don't have their accents when they sing??...they sound American....there are a bunch of them that I thought were American

Some do. If you listen for them, sometimes you can hear it.

But really, it is because of the idea of cadence. And secondly, a lot of the identifiers of an accent (certain ways words are pronounced) fall to the side, when singing to produce a melody and/or match a harmony or a rhythm. Consonants they would normally not pronounce or would drop are pronounced, for example.

Listen to Robert plant sing words with r sounds in them after vowel sounds. Like, "turned". Imagine in your head a Brit speaking the word "turned". Now imagine Plant singing the word that way. It turns the word into a nasally mess with a long, nasally vowel sound that is not appealing to the ear. So, instead, he says, "T (errrr) ned". If he sang it with the accent, it would sound like "Tenned", with a long, nasally sound for the vowel sound.

"The queen of light took her vow, and then she turned to gold..." - Battle of Evermore

Another example: The British (and some regional US dialects) have a tendency to put an "R" sound between two vowel sounds, when the vowels end one word and start another. This melts away, when they are singing.

 

[Gabe Lackmann]

 

[Crepitus]

..how come the Brits and Aussies don't have their accents when they sing??...they sound American....there are a bunch of them that I thought were American

They don't sound like Americans when they sing, we sound like singing Brits when we talk.

 

[deannalw]

Mel Tillis stuttered horribly except for when he sang.

For whatever that's worth...

 

[petro]

Mel Tillis stuttered horribly except for when he sang.

For whatever that's worth...

I always thought that was amazing.

Speaking of Brits, why can I understand Ozzie Ozborne when he sings but he is completely unintelligible when he talks?