Can't recall many 'pop pickers' praising ballads and folk songs in my time.

Most music lovers I know tend to be an eclectic bunch with an encyclopaedic erudition in all matters appertain to Popular Music & beyond - including Ballads and Folk Songs, and their various purveyors both sides of The Revival.

That is never an issue - it's the Dick Mileses, Jim Carrolls & Kendall Morses of this world for whom pop music vacuous drivel that is the problem.

Yeah, Folk Music is okay - just Folkies you have to watch out for, those self-appointed guardians & gatekeepers of The Tradition who can spot the differences between the Eighteen Hundred and Fifty tunes in Chief O'Nell's Mo'I and have the neck to deride Hip Hop and (horrors!) Rap Music because it all sounds the same. Oh, the humanity!