In the long run, performing what you enjoy will always produce the most appealing results. Consciously or not, listeners will always "hear" your love for your material, and they'll appreciate it.

I think you are probably putting too much weight on someone's random, unconsidered comment. Someone who may very well tell everyone "You should sing nothing but unaccompanied sea shanties."

At the risk of introducing thread drift, let me mention a similar but different issue that occurred to me while reading through this thread: I really love (and love to sing) several entire genres of music that I'm not capable of playing on my one instrument, the acoustic guitar. I have had a few brief opportunities to sing in front of big loud bands featuring horns and various electrified instruments, but have no realistic chance to do so regularly. Performing solo is nice, but limits me to the tamest, least dynamic portion of my potential repertoire. Anyone empathize? Or even understand what I'm talking about?