Sounding Like Liverpool

Cilla Black sang and spoke with a pronounced Liverpool accent. Despite attempts to eliminate it, this quality remained, ultimately becoming a point of identification for listeners. This chapter explores how Black’s voice defied class-marked notions of respectability. Her voice—and persona—were a problem for music critics. Unlike the cool ordinariness embodied by singers like Sandie Shaw, Black communicated a different ordinariness, one rooted in working-class identity, which complicated her position in hip, modern, Swinging London. Her first hit, “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” reveals how this plays out musically. The chapter considers Black in the context of Merseybeat and the ideology of authenticity that characterized rock and roll and places her performances in the context of the mid-1960s boom in popular linguistic and quasi-ethnographic publications purporting to document Liverpool culture. The chapter concludes with reflections on Black’s early TV career and considers how contemporary Liverpool musicians contend with her legacy.