I find a world of difference between someone saying they don't like a given song and someone saying they don't like trad music, or jazz, or whatever. Thus my 95% remark. Before I decide I don't like something, I listen to it first.

My long held belief is that I'm not keen on soft rock ballads. This is based on long experience of being forced to listen to them and having a variety of reactions from nauseated to mildly irritated to reaching for the dial double quick. NOW... I could accept that soft rock ballads aren't really my bag and use my allotted time on earth to listen to music that moves me and has a resonance for me... or, in pursuit of some daft principle about fairness and not writing off entire genres I could concentrate my energy on listening to soft rock ballads, on the off chance that there might be a handful out there that would make this sorry and abject waste of my time worthwhile. D'you see what I'm getting at? I don't like that type of music as shorthand for in my experience, thus far, I have failed do enjoy any but an insignificant amount of music that could be lumped together and described in this particular way. Which is a bit clunky, to say the least...

By the way, as far as I can work out, singer-songwriter is not a genre of music, it's statement of intent, a job description, a territorial marker and an outward expression of an inner state that the person who thus labels themselves wants to convey. In my humble opinion. There are plenty of writers of songs who also sing them themselves who would probably barf at the prospect of being described as a singer songwriter. There's a visible miasma of portentiousness and self importance around the descriptor that puts this ex-punk in mind of that dreary 1970s cult of Californication...

All of which means I have created for myself a gaping loophole. I can continue to not be particularly enamoured of the whole singer songwriter concept whilst enjoying some music by singers who write their own songs ... and, in truth, wishing that more of them would do a Neil Young and transcend the bland intropection by getting themselves a Crazy Horse to play with...