Find out more about American accents and how they fit into the past, present and future of worldwide pop culture.

 America has a huge worldwide influence in popular culture. Films, tv shows, performers, media, music and much more from America is experienced, seen and heard across the planet. This influence is much greater than any other country.

One prime example of this is in music. American music tends to be the most popular across many worldwide charts overall. In fact well over half of all the best-selling artists that ever existed come from America.

One reason for this could be that America is a rich country, and so the money for marketing and pushing music artists is high. MTV, which launched in the early 80’s also had a huge influence over music culture and exposure. It launched in America and was biased in its promotion of American singers before any other accents or languages.

Interestingly, lots of artists who are not American started singing with an American accent to gain popularity with a worldwide audience. This is in response to the dominance of American artists in the charts. This same dominance over the years also explains why so many of us sing with an American accent – it’s because that is what we hear the most in the charts.  Likewise this prominence has led to a real demand for American voice over artists.

American English Or British English?

When English is taught there are signs that American English is going to be the type used as a baseline. A really good example of this in action is in Singapore. As it has history of a British colony many of the children there are taught British English. With that in mind, you would think that they would then sound British when speaking English, but they do not. In fact, if you visit, you will find most people will sound American when they speak English and that is simply because of exposure to American TV, American music and general American pop culture. Younger people especially, are invested in this culture and therefore, invested in the American accent because it is cool.

Moving forward, there is every chance that this will continue to be the case, with the potential for the world to lean towards an American accent when speaking English, even those living in England. Social media especially, has us all sharing Americanisms in the way we speak, something that is set to continue to grow moving forward.

American Accents & Business

For any brand releasing advertising it is so important to bear in mind the huge impact of American accents in pop culture. To be relevant, you must understand how using an American accent could influence the work that you put out to your audience. Try speaking to a professional voiceover agency for more of an insight into how it could benefit your latest advertising campaign. It may also be relevant in your training voice over plans, particularly if you are targeting international audiences rather than very specific regional areas.