Harmonium Hero is right, folk songs are "the ones that survive". For that to happen, the songs have to be taken into the hearts and memories of others who will want to hear them again and perhaps learn them and sing them. When a song is young and new, a sort of evolutionary process begins, by which the good songs are passed on and cherished, and the bad ones rejected.

The trouble with recent songs is that they have not had time to be subject to this process, so all the dross is still in there along with a few gold nuggets. Some writers could help the process along by being a bit more self-critical and prepared to consider whether the song is being appreciated by their audience. Some clearly neither know nor care, persisting in offering self-indulgent outpourings to a hapless audience. If you're doing it just to express yourself, it's seldom good enough for anyone else to want to hear. But if your audience are responsive and ask for more, you must be doing something right.

Marje