‘American Idol XIII’ video: Contestant Ethan Harris auditions to Keith Urban hit

Now that we are starting to get relatively close to the January 15 return of “American idol” to TV, Fox is really starting to open up the floodgates, and allowing us to see and get to know some of the contestants who are trying out to be the next big thing in music.

One of them is Ethan Harris, a guy who is dressed like a modern-day member of the Rolling Stones, and with a high-pitched voice that is a little bit surprising when you first hear him. He also sings almost exactly like he speaks, and the self-proclaimed “big Keith Urban fan” chooses to perform one of his songs in “You’ll Think of Me.”

Does Ethan have the best voice we’ve ever heard? No, but we’ve seen in past promos that “American Idol” really loves the guitar this year after steering clear of it for much of season 12. They’ll likely give him a yes for the next round, and we would to. We don’t think he has the strongest voice on the planet, but he at least stays in tune and handles a the melody pretty well. What we are looking for in the auditions is a decent voice, likability, and also a little bit of showmanship that suggests that they won’t just give talent-show performances all season long.

We also like that Ethan says that it’s “nice” to see the judges laughing and getting along, though we think he may have chickened out a little bit when they asked why that was. We all know that the real answer here is the judges spent most of last year looking like they were about to murder each other on the panel, or at least Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj did with their constant stream of negativity.

We’re going to have some more of these promos out over the coming days, so be on the lookout for those.