It doesn't bother me to listen to a song in dialect, even poorly done, so long as the singer means well and is true to the music. After all, I listened for years to Scotty explain to the captain, in a strange Scottish dialect, that the engines weren't working very well.
    But my background may have determined my level of tolerance for strange dialect. My father was career military, so I spent my childhood in San Angelo, Texas, where he was stationed. But the rest of the clan was in the (heavily Irish) city of St. Paul, Minnesota, where we spent time when the old man was overseas. This resulted in permanent culture shock and language confusion. ("Yah, sure" got confused with both "Sure, and.." and "Y'all.")
    My paternal grandparents were from Immigrants from Dublin, and my maternal grandmother played the guitar rather well and sang many semi-traditional Irish songs. Trouble was, she was an immigrant from Oslo and sang with a heavy Norwegian accent. Singing in dialect doesn't bother me after years of hearing "Yipsy rofer come ofer da hill..."

O'Meara