I listened to a bunch of Beatles songs yesterday to check out whether I remember them correctly and wow, my impression that they sang with a British accent is largely wrong. I can't believe I've never noticed this before!
Sometimes they seem to be imitating a Southern American accent, especially in American songs they are doing covers of - "A'hm" instead of "I'm," that sort of thing - subtle and easy to miss. Probably imitiating the accent of the original singers.
Of the couple dozen songs I listened to, it's easier to target the few instances where I did hear British pronunciation: "can't" in All You Need is Love (didn't open up the vowell); "perfectly" (vowell is more like "air" than "err") in Fool on the Hill. But in the same song, they pronounce the vowells in "day," "answer" and "man" and in the American way. In Eleanor Rigby, they don't hit the "r" hard in the first "church," but they do in the second (for emphasis?) They pronounce the vowell in "been" in the British way, but "rice," "face," and "name" have American vowells.
(By British accent, I mean the Beatles' speaking accent, which of course is a regional accent as well.)
So does it just happen that an American accent corresponds to what people are forced to do when they sing (pronounce r's and open up vowells?) For instance, words like "words," "there" and "near" sound American because they are holding the "r"s in order to draw out the sound much longer than you'd speak the same word. But then, how come the British punk bands didn't do the same, then? Or did groups like the Beatles start off by imitating American singers and consciously or unconsciously continue doing so even in their own original songs?
It comes down to training. People who are trained sing in a way that is not heavily accented. In fact, my teacher when I was a child really worked to remove the natural twang from my singing voice.
That would explain the musicals singers, but pop bands? The Beatles were never formally taught to sing, were they?
And that begs the question why "no accent" means "standard American accent (sometimes with a Southern inflection.") Sure, I think an American accent means no accent, but I didn't expect foreigners to think that too.
And I still haven't seen anyone address the fascinating question: for those of you who don't speak with an American accent, do American singers sound like they have "no accent" to you?
(I mean, he's from Lowestoft, for crying out loud - mind you, so were The Darkness. 
