My knowledge is mainly limited to traditional English song, and it's always seemed to me that 'the folk' mainly liked songs of love and songs of adventure; or ideally, both in the same song. Songs of protest seem to have been in the minority, but doubtless that's a reflection of England's overall stability and prosperity compared to, say, Ireland's.

Someone mentioned earlier that songs about war could be seen as inherently political, but I wonder if that's true. It strikes me that in songs like High Germany or The White Cockade the lament is on a more personal level, the woes being for a soldier boy and the grievance against the recruiting sergeant. The inevitability of war rarely seems to be challenged like it would be in the protest songs of the 20th century.