This is an interesting thread started by George, that I've only just seen thanks to it being refreshed by McGrath of Harlow.

It seems to me there is a bit of muddying of the water between contemporary singer-songwriters who are already regarded as being in the folk category, and others who definitely are not.

For example, many of Joni Mitchell's songs have been sung in folk clubs since the 1960s, and although there are always hardcore traddies who would say her songs are not folk music, I think I'm right in saying that most of us would regard a lot of her early output in particular as being in the folk domain. Likewise, Bob Dylan, Harvey Andrews and Suzanne Vega have been associated with the folk scene in their time (whether or not you agree that they should have been is another matter entirely, that I don't want to get into in this thread).

Whereas artists like Rod Stewart, Slade, Billy Joel, Cindi Lauper and Dire Straits would not normally be regarded as having anything to do with folk. Yet, as people have said in this thread, some individual songs by these artists can be imagined sung in a folk setting.

I'm not sure where you draw the line between 'people who are sort of folky already' and 'people who have nowt to do with folk music', but I guess as always this would be subjective.

By coincidence, last Saturday I had the radio on in the car and the DJ played Slade's "Far Far Away" and I remarked to Mrs Scrump that I could imagine singing a 'folky' version of it, something I hadn't thought of before, even though I'd heard the song before many times over the years.

I'm not sure what it is about a 'non-folk' song that gives it 'folk possibilities'. I think perhaps sometimes it's the lyrics, which may be dealing with something different than the usual 'lurve' subject matter - perhaps they tell an interesting story, or deal with topical issues; or maybe the tune has a 'folky' feel to it somehow. I think the Slade one I quoted above is probably in the latter category, but I'm not really sure why.

I have seen people do 'non-folk' songs in folk clubs (e.g. I saw someone do The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, which raised a few eyebrows when the singer announced it, but it has a (sort of) story to it and it seemed to go down well with the audience in spite of the possible misgivings (he did give it a 'folky' arrangement on acoustic guitar which helped its 'folky' credentials).