Joe Offer - Now, if you want to hear Britons trying to sound American, listen to Lonnie Donegan or the Rolling Stones.

Or Elton John. I like a lot of Elton John's songs, and the Rolling Stones' for that matter, but I've never been enough of a fan of either to actually acquire much more than a best-of album, and I think that's partly to do with a resistance to the accents. (And just imagine the mockery if English artists felt they had to sing everything with a French or Italian accent).

Again, this is about British people singing with an "American" accent, or mid-Atlantic accent (which I read as being neither one thing nor the other, but falling somewhere in the sea between two stools). Americans singing in American - like Dana and Susan Robinson or anyone else - great, perfect. (Similarly, I don't much like to see British actors playing Americans, as it looks fraudulent - though oddly, as a Brit, I am utterly unbothered by Rene Zellweger or Russell Crowe or Cate Blanchett playing Brits).

There were a couple of good songwriters and singers in the West Country folk/acoustic club I used to go to (before it had to fold), and they too spoke in English accents but insisted on singing in American, often about American subjects too. Obviously they genuinely loved the sound and the stories and culture of US music, but I still thought of it as a pretence of some sort.

Having said all this, I recognise a singing voice is never going to be the same as a speaking voice, well, except for the likes of William Shatner, and no-one expects opera singers to sing with a voice like their speaking voices.

@ bubblyrat - Caribbean accent: when I first heard Tony Cozier, the cricket commentator from Barbados, on the radio, I assumed he was a black West Indian - but he looks like a white retired bank manager from the Home Counties.