‘American Idol XIII’ video: Contestant Marialle Sellars sings Bruno Mars

Another day, and another “American Idol” audition preview. While January 15 may still be quite the ways away, you can check out in the video below one of the young hopefuls auditioning for this season in Marialle Sellars. She may only be 17 years old, but she has a nice voice, can play the guitar, and brings something a little bit different and unexpected to the show with the way that she performs.

She chooses for her audition song “Grenade” by Bruno Mars, which we cannot really say is the most creative audition track given that it has been done many times on the show already. But, it sounds pretty new courtesy of her guitar arrangement, and she sings with some confidence and emotion. She also has the same sort of hairdo as Miley Cyrus, minus all the twerking and controversy surrounding her antics.

We feel very confident about Marialle getting a golden ticket into the next round, and she’s going to have a good chance at getting into the live rounds. One of the things that we feel like could work to her favor here is that typically, the only female contestants with guitars that we see on the show are country artists. So to have someone who is a little bit different is a refreshing change-up, and that’s something that we would love to see a little more of so long as the rest of her performances are pretty similar to this one. Granted, at some point she will also need to prove that she is capable of giving a great performance without the guitar around.