“Britpop Is a Thing, Damn It”

English undoubtedly is the lingua franca of pop culture. In music performances, American English is the dominant voice. Audiences are used to hearing an American-influenced accent in many popular genres. Nevertheless, the “going local” trend advocated in the British punk era perpetuates in modern music and motivates artists to perform in their local voice. The audience is a driving force behind such trends, but its role has been widely neglected in research. This explorative folk-linguistic study gives center stage to the audience and examines British attitudes toward the American accent both in general and in music, focusing on methodological aspects of attitudes of research in performances. Results show that respondents accept an Americanized singing style and consider it the default mode. However, local British accents are a welcome change and support cultural independence. Findings indicate the importance of working with music stimuli to gather more detailed results on language perception.