Abstract

This study investigates how accent features can be used in singing performances in order to index a specific identity. In particular, the study considers the accent and singing styles present in the music of Manchester band Oasis. Previous studies have highlighted the prominence of American accent features used by artists like The Beatles, to emulate the success of popular American singers; whereas artists associated with the indie genre often purposely subvert these expectations by embracing their own ‘real’ accents in their singing. A quantitative analysis of the occurrence of features from Simpson’s (1999) USA-5 model in the 1994 songs Supersonic and Half the World Away, sung by frontmen Liam and Noel Gallagher respectively, is conducted in this study. These results are also compared to the brothers’ ‘real’ accents using data from a 1994 interview. It is argued, as Liam uses more British English features in his singing, similar to that of his real speech, and Noel uses more American features, that the band did not index one specific identity. Rather, their use of different accent features indicates a multimodal identity that both appeals to a global audience and complements the genre and style of each individual song.

Keywords

Accent, Dialect, Indexicality, Identity, Class

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