"It's complicated."


Wise words indeed. I think part of the problem is that 'traditional' is really an umbrella terms covering a whole complex of situations. For example, it's worth thinking about back-of-the-bus songs, by which I mean the sort of song that a moderately random group of people on a social outing might start singing to pass the time on a journey, and perhaps the prime example of this is "Yellow Submarine". I think it wouldn't be too misleading that to say that is a traditional song to sing in that scenario, without claiming the song itself is traditional.