One of the things I (and plenty of others) dislike about the song under discussion is not quite that it signifies women's oppression but that it attempts to justify and rationalise ownership of one human being by another, regardless of gender. This is a bit sick and always wrong, no matter what accent or dialect it's warbled in. When the melodic structure is further ruined and, in the case of the Shrek soundtrack, the horrendously poor diction wanders way out of tune, it's just bad music.

No-one (certainly not me) said the only English music is 'traditional dance music'. Music played in England for dancing isn't exclusively 'English' nor 'traditional but is played in a recognisable English style. Opera by English composers is English music and so are the Kinks. But the kRusby covering Village Green Preservation Society as the soundtrack for a sitcom doesn't make it merit the description of English music in that sense. It's a commercial pop cover.

Jazz is clearly not English music since it originated from black musicians in New Orleans and Chicago. But English music can and does incorporate jazz chords and rhythmic structures, the most obvious current example (though by no means the sole example) being Bellowhead. Why this works with jazz without dumbing down the genre but is universally disastrous when the mainstream pop world has one of its periodic forays into what it imagines is 'f*lk' music is, I think, down to two factors:

(a) a far higher standard of musicianship and
(b) an avoidance of cultural vandalism.

Every now and then Tin Pan Alley (or the Brill building) decrees that a tinge of f*lk is going to be the new whatever and stuff like hurdy-gurdies and mildly exotic drums are 'kewl'. That's just one of the reasons why the term needs binning because it's become so meaningless and you get people thinking it comprises any wifty-wafty, new-agey, snigger-snoggery MOR shit.

There's not a trace of wit or winding up in this post. I'm just pissed off that it's necessary to click the keyboard and write it down.