Hi Wee Jock,

Lots of people share your views. I know of at least one well known singer who walks out of a room as soon as she hears it announced.
Personally, I think the amount a song is hated is related to how good it is. The better the song the more pronounced the view.
There is a whole raft of folk tunes and songs that were often published in the forties and fifties that were regarded as folk, for instance "Dashing away with the Smoothing Iron", "Widdicombe Fair", "Dye Ken John Peel", and dozens of others, that all had strong, memorable tunes, and were easily remembered. For that reason they all disappeared from the average singers repertoire, and a second wave of more obscure tunes were "discovered", these in turn made way for, perhaps, the less successful songs that had been collected.
Fashion seems to be at the root of this. There is always a current song that is done to death in singarounds at Folk Festivals. The song of the moment will then largely disappear, except when some poor soul starts to sing it to general disapproval! "Streets of London" is one of these from way, way back.
The trick is to know when they have been forgotten, and are due for revival. Come back "The Last of the Great Whales"!!