Accent

I've always been quite aware of my accent. Where I live, in rural Oxfordshire, there appear to be two main accents: the fairly posh, middle class accent of the families who moved here because it's a nice place, and the only-subtly-different-from-the-broad-stereotype "farmer accent" of the families who actually come from here. At primary school, I always knew I was at the posh end of the scale, even if I didn't understand the reasons behind it, and I didn't like it. The boys I used to play football with tended to have the other accent, and over time I changed mine to fit in with them, partly consciously and probably partly not. I felt good about this, and liked the way I could greet someone with "orroyt" ("alright") instead of "hello" and not feel silly about it.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to just throw off my posh roots entirely. There were certain situations, such as talking to similarly middle-class relatives, when I instinctively slipped back into The Queen's English, meaning I now had two distinct accents. For some years, this was a satisfactory compromise, only running into problems when I had to speak in the presence of groups of people who weren't all expecting the same accent, leading to a weird posh-rural hybrid.
A new set of problems arose when my voice broke. Since it broke after pretty much every one of my friends', I had been compensating by trying to talk lower in my unbroken voice, but I think what must have happened is that I forgot to stop doing this when my voice actually broke, because to this day my voice has this stupid, artificially low tone that sounds like I'm trying to do an impression of someone with a lower voice. I think that if I hadn't been so bothered about people taking the piss, I might now have a charming, pleasant, soft English lilt, but I don't: I talk in an annoying, posh, rumbling squeak with random farmer words and the odd bit of street language thrown in. Then again, no-one likes their voice when they hear it on tape, do they?
Of course, as a singer (ha!) with an interest in sound engineering, hearing my voice on tape is an occupational hazard, and opens up a whole new can of worms. The label on this particular can of worms reads "you may have the ability to talk like Hugh Grant, Jethro or an odd mixture of the two, but not one of those three choices results in a singing voice that anyone will want to hear". I also only ever get through half a can of "you can't bloody sing" worms before getting a bit queasy and putting them in the fridge for another day. Of course, the standard thing for bad English singers to do is to put on an American accent, but Bad English Singer isn't a niche I'm really interested in; Alternative Indie Icon is really what I'm aiming for, which narrows my options down considerably. Do I put on a Cockney accent? It worked for Mike Skinner (aka The Streets), who is actually a brummy, but I'm not sure I could pull it off. Maybe something northern? Oasis, Stone Roses, Arctic Monkeys - none of them have to cover up their accent because being northern is cool, but a posh lad singing like a Yorkshireman or a Scouser sounds more like a recipe for bad comedy than good music.
So what am I left with? Well, it wouldn't be a post on this blog if I didn't mention Radiohead. They all grew up just a few miles from me and went to public school, so how does Thom Yorke manage to sound so cool when he sings? Perhaps it's the mumbliness, if that's a word, or his anger, his conviction, but something in his style of singing stops you from thinking "what is this posh twat moaning about?". OK, maybe some people do think that, but that's another story. I guess what I'm trying to say, if only because I'm fumbling around for a conclusion to this post, is that sometimes I have a good reason for trying to copy Radiohead when making music - they're a bunch of rural Oxfordshire musicians who figured out how to be cool.