The disputed performances here - and in a million other threads - are all, to varying extents, "folk-inspired."

That said, they're not "folk" any more than a topiary is a plant-seed. People who insist they are are using "folk" mostly as a term of praise for something they like that has some conceivable relation to actual "folk" alias "trad" alias "roots music." (It's never called "folk" if they don't like it, at least not on Mudcat.)

That says nothing, however, about the quality, or even value, of such performances as music or entertainment.