I'm so glad there's someone else that doesn't hate it. I thought it was my guilty secret.
If the audience don't like what you're playing, and you're playing it well, it's not a problem with either you or the audience. The problem is that you're playing to the wrong audience. And if you're playing to a lowest-common-denominator audience, unless you're really up yourself [1], you can play songs which you at the very least don't hate but which the audience will love. My covers band plays a couple of UB40 songs but we wouldn't touch "Red Red Fscking Whine" with a bargepole. I think (and hope) the guitarist has now abandoned the idea of doing "Youm Sex Am On Foyur" [2] - a song which gets a lot of slagging off, but the original isn't too bad. Haven't ever heard a cover that does it justice, TBH, including any of my bands that did it.
[1] Whatever did happen to Edward Himself, or Young Up, as I used to think of him?
[2] As referred to by a singer I once worked with - she was from Oldbury