Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Clearly, Season 13 is looking like the year of the guitar on American Idol.

Unless your name is Viviana Villalon. In which case it might be the year of the ukulele.

Viviana Villalon earned a golden ticket at American Idol’s Austin auditions. (FOX Photo)

After all, the 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, writes this on her Twitter profile: “I play ukulele. And I dream big.”

So far, so good on Idol, where we saw a snippet of her audition with her ukulele on the season premiere.

She sang Maroon 5’s “Love Somebody” as one of her two songs and earned a golden ticket to Hollywood with three yes votes from the judges.

Viviana is a communications major at the University of Texas Pan American and says she’s been watching American Idol since age 11.

Heck, a former contestant even serves as her musical inspiration. That would be Jason Castro who — you guessed it — played the ukulele on the show and is now a Christian artist.

Besides the ukulele, Viviana thinks her vocal sound might help her stand out on Idol. She says Jennifer Lopez referred to it as “rich and deep” during her audition.

“My voice definitely makes me unique,” she says in her Road to Hollywood video. “I’ve never heard anyone else with it before. I hope that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I hope people think, ‘She’s different.’ I like it.”

You can check out her voice — certainly more than you heard on Idol — in the videos below. And you can hear more of Viviana on her YouTube channel.

If you’d like to follow her, here are links to her Facebook page and Twitter account (@VivianVocals).

“You and I”

“Hey Brother” (cover)