When the subject of music comes up, there are passionate supporters who by the necessity of being emotionally moved, they have to take a seemingly obdurate position. There's nothing wrong with that. When these supporters have their bias, then other musics tend to get diminished in their conversations. That's human.

I have my preferences which I often state emphatically. I tend to ignore or shove aside
that music which doesn't reflect my interests. I will still give credence to Arnold Schoenberg as being a great composer even though I dislike his music intensely. (Was it Nazi code?)

Pop performers are talented and they do what they do with skill whether I like it or not.
But don't tell me that they are true folk singers. That's specious.

You are not a folk singer because you say you are. Alice in Wonderland, "Just because you say it's true doesn't mean it's so."

Don't tell me that a modern navel-gazing drivel-driven rant or plaint written by a young pop singer who hasn't lived much is a folk song. Even if it's a very good song, which some of them are.

I have nothing against pop music from any era though because of my age and conditioning, I prefer older songs from the Twenties and Thirties. I understand them better.

They may or may not have a "tradition" but they're not folk songs. They're composed, written for the Broadway stage or the marketplace.

There is a body of music that is culture-based and has stuck around for a long time through changes and there are practitioners of this style of singing who convey this material through having learned it from their sub-cultural environment. Blues, Appalachian, Old Ballads, Sean Nos, jazz, and their corollary from other cultures and countries.

Their style of singing is reflective of a unique way of delivery and purpose. I may sing folksongs forever but I am not going to be in that category as much as I love that music.
If I attempt to sing that way, it comes out phony. (Many "revivalists" in folk do sound phony because they attempt to imitate rather than find their own voices).

The reason that we have Mudcat is because of Tradition(s), otherwise why bother?