Singing songs only from your own area would solve the problem, I suppose, but might be a bit limiting if you don't come from a particularly song-rich place.

I agree in principle about "putting on" accents, but I find it hard to put into practice if I have consistently heard the song sung that way, that is, in a variety of English substantially different from mine. Somehow the dialect seems to be an integral part of it.

Ewan MacColl's Scots may irritate some other Scots, but that is not necessarily a sign of inauthenticity. Scots is not a uniform thing at all. Burns's Ayrshire dialect has "yin" for "one," where Lothian has "ane." This provides Burns with some rhymes that he would not have otherwise, while depriving him of others. The "Doric" of the northeast differs a good deal from other varieties of Scots. No one not from Dundee can understand anyone from Dundee. And so on.

If someone can pull off doing a song with an Ulster accent and the next one with a County Clare accent, why, more power to him-or-her, say I. I wish I could do that.

Being a navy brat, I don't really have a regional accent that can be pinned down, so I sound a bit odd everywhere. Maybe that's an advantage in some contexts . . . .

Stephen