The tired old traditional stuff is still around because it is good. The jury is still out on the new stuff. If it's good, it will survive. Otherwise it will die.

The bottom line is that if you don't sing your own songs - no one else is going to - are they? So if you don't sing them - they will die before they are born. Should there be any real chance that having gone to the trouble of writing them that you are not going to sing them.

The reason I suggest that you just sing the songs but don't tell the audience that they are your originals - is because that is about the only way you will ever get an honest opinion and be able to gauge the strength of the song.

For as demonstrated to an extent here - rather than encouraging it - there often appears to be a lot of jealousy involved towards new performers singing their own material. Sometimes to the extent that a good original song will meet with a less than honest and sometimes a hostile response - from those who perhaps may secretly wish that they had been able to write it. It is difficult to understand this approach but it would be foolish to pretend that it was not there.

To my mind, an honest introspective navel-gazing self-penned effort is often more entertaining than a safe but uninspired rendition of a well-tried classic. The main point to remember is that it is the song and the performance that is more important than boosting the ego of whoever may be singing it.