Interesting, and I agree to an extent that people are afraid of politically explosive writing. However, I've recently done placements with radio production companies in the UK, and worked on popular music shows (my masters is in radio journalism). I picked up on the fact that most heavy metal songs played on the Radio 1 Rock Show are heavily topical and often strongly anti-establishment or are addressing enviromental isses (System of a Down ['folk metal', according to wikipedia], Rage Against The Machine, for example). Then there's Coldplay, and the Kaiser Chiefs, and a number of pop / soft rock bands that deal with political issues.

I know that there are people out there writing topical folk material, but for some reason they aren't the people making it into widestream popular culture. I'm not entirely convinced that that's down to fear of airplay-based repercussion for political bias, especially since most folk artists in the charts right now have got there because (in part) of a lot of airplay from the Beeb.

Do you think it's all a scam, or that young new-wave folk artists think they have to dumb down to make it big? I think that if responsibility lies anywhere, it's with MTV culture and record companies.