Can I just add here that this "anything goes" attitude is a very, very new kid on the block
A few years ago I began sending Steve Roud lists and examples of the songs we collected - quite correctly, he chose the traditional ones for his numbering system and ignored those that were not 'folk'
A typical example was a C and W song entitled John F Kennedy we'd recorded from a Traveller whose repertoire also included a version of the Seven Gypsies (from his mother) and several other genuine folk songs
To my knowledge, that has never been given a Roud Number (quite rightly) yet he now argues that everything a traditional singer sings is a traditional song - a screeching U-turn
What new information do we have that suddenly makes pop songs 'folk songs' deserving of Roud numbers - buggered if I can see any
Jim Carroll