Lev... I think the problem arises with the dual meaning of the term 'singer songwriter'. Here wot I think.

One meaning is simply a broad descriptor for anyone who sings songs they write themselves (an incredibly huge category that can span from the sort of stuff you or Bob Pegg write to Adele to Nick Drake to Joni Mitchell to Jonathan Richman. Some of it is broadly folktastic, some of it isn't. Everyone draws the line in the sand in a different place depending on personal preferences and, uh, degree of 'purism').

The other meaning - which I think Suibhne is alluding to and which I've had the odd on-line pukefest about in the past - is the far narrower singer-songwriter genre of post James Taylor MOR navel-gazers and its British variants (James fecking Bl*nt, anyone?). Of course, there's also those people who turn up to folk clubs with not-very-good acoustic MOR pop songs - originals and covers - of various levels of mawkishness. Is this a particularly Lancastrian phenomenon, I wonder? Endless sub-Matchstick Men gloopfests about clogs, cobbles, hotpot and mills?