accents (without umlauts)

I remember someone once told me that you couldn’t hear someone’s accent when they were singing. It struck me as an odd, and not entirely accurate observation. After all, how could you account for the heavily Australian accent of Mick Thomas if that were true. I then heard Missy Higgins, who sounds so Australian it’s almost caricature. I mean, her big hit is “Scaah” (Australians are suffering a chronic shortage of the letter “R” and try to use it economically, if at all) and refers to ‘moi noightloight’ (my nightlight) in one song. Sounds good, if kinda weird.