I was referring to the genre - Neil Young, Simon & Garfunkel, Dylan, John Prine, etc. You could equally well call it Sheryl-Crow-music or John-Denver-music. I haven't knowingly heard anybody here perform an actual Lakeman song. I suppose the same people who do "Annie's Song" in sessions labelled as "folk" will get round to it eventually.

You seriously think listening to somebody like Lakeman is going to get people interested in Lizzie Higgins or Catherine-Anne MacPhee? The point of his marketing strategy seems to be that he can't actually hack it as a pop musician. So he does pop anyway but calls it something else, aiming at an audience that thinks maybe they ought to be listening to something other than pop as well. And behold, they listen to something labelled as "folk" and like it. Hardly bloody surprising when it's the same pop they've always listened to, only coming out of a different bin.

Eddi Reader (a *lot* better-known than Lakeman in Scotland) has slightly different strategy. She's another failed popster, but instead of relabelling pop as folk, she's tried doing genuine folk, but in the performance style she's used to. It isn't working all that well.