It’s one of the great injustices of the world that even our best Americans can’t fully pull off the accents of other countries, while just about any person not from the United States can sound like they’re straight out of Kansas with minimal effort.
While many foreign-born folk have just as much trouble with South Boston and Deep South accents as Americans do, almost all of them can do Mid-Atlantic blandery just fine. As a result, there are many musicians who you would never know weren’t from America if you were strictly going off their music. Here are some of the world’s best American imitators.
Ed Sheeran
Remember, in order for this to work, everything we know about the artist must be forgotten. Of course, Ed Sheeran is British. Just look at him.
But you’d never know that the internet-deemed red-headed muppet came from across the pond if someone dropped his album into your lap. “Thinking Out Loud” could well be the work of a sensitive Californian in a local coffee shop where the cups are just kind of okay, but the price is right.
Keith Urban
Country music is where America stashes its most idealized version of itself. For an outsider to slot in alongside down-home superstars like Jason Aldean and Blake Shelton, their imitation would have to be damn-near perfect. Luckily for Keith Urban, there isn’t a single crack in the facade of his twang.
The Australian crooner has been a massive presence on the country music scene since 1999, so it’s unlikely that anyone who pays attention to the genre doesn’t know he’s an Aussie by now. But anyone who tells you that they can hear an Oz accent in songs like “Somebody Like You” or “Where The Blacktop Ends” is lying.
Neil Young
Okay, so “far, far away” might be a bit of a stretch on this one. But it is shocking to learn that Neil Young, the singer behind some of the greatest American protest anthems ever written, is actually from America’s Hat. Though Young had a hand in “For What It’s Worth,” “Southern Man” and “Ohio”, the folkie hails from Winnipeg.
It’s been 50 years since Young moved to the States to pursue a career in music and he’s yet to drop an “aboot” or “sore-ry” on wax.
Marlon Williams
The subject of our latest Uncharted is a Kiwi with a voice that sounds like it’s coming straight out of Appalachia. A spin of Willams’ recent self-titled album is likely to conjure up images of dust and the American interior, images that will only shift to the New Zealand bush if you take a glance at his biography.
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy is perhaps the most difficult singer on the list to distance from his Britishness. He’s made a brand out of his uniquely garbled speech patterns and his drawn-out cries of his wife’s name. But try and place yourself in the shoes of a teenager in 1970 hearing “Paranoid” for the first time.
It’s just as easy to hear that voice coming from a garage in Omaha as it is to place it in an apartment in the West Midlands. And Ozzy’s vocal ambiguity only grew as he became more comfortable with his own voice. Just take a listen to “Crazy Train” or “Mama, I’m Coming Home” and tell me you can’t hear it coming from countless arena-ready American acts.
