_This past week has seen countless mentions of the 15 year old Korean girl, Park Ji Min, singing a cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" on the Korean talent show KPop Star.

This is a talented young singer who did a great cover of the track. However I have a simple question:

Would we be as impressed by this performance if she was singing an original song?

Here in Australia I've seen this footage countless times this week and there are blogs all over the web mentioning the video. The media are certainly captivated by what she has done. But let's just be reminded that this is a very loyal performance of a song we have all heard before. Are we impressed by how like-sounding she is to Adele's original? Impressed by the young age? A combination of both?

I have written before of the way people listen to commercial radio and popular music - as it is generally easy, non-challenging and most of all familiar.

A greater level of talent would be required to not just nail a vocal performance, but to have actually composed the song. Again, I'm not discrediting this girl's performance. I am simply lamenting my belief that if she did compose an original song and perform it to the same level of expertise, we would probably never hear of it.

The sad, beautiful truth is that so much of the world's great original music will never find its audience.