City star Aston Merrygold and his bandmates sang their hearts out in front of 12 million people on Saturday night to secure another well-earned place in the next round of the popular singing contest.

After feeling somewhat star struck following their meeting with one of the world's biggest stars in the music industry, Mariah Carey, the four-piece got to work on rehearsing their own version of one of her top singles.

The group, made up of Peterborough's 20-year-old Aston, and bandmates Marvin Humes, Oritse Williams and JB Gil, sang Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men duo One Sweet Day.

And, once again, the performance earned rave reviews from the four judges, including the toughest of all, Simon Cowell.

Simon said: "It was an impossibly hard song to sing, a duo like that, but you were great.

"You have all really connected, the image is fantastic, the chemistry fantastic. I will be amazed if you don't make it to the final."

Mentor Louis Walsh added: "In the words of Barack Obama, can you win the competition?

"Yes you can."

Speaking exclusively to The Evening Telegraph, Aston said: "We had some fantastic comments from the judges again on Saturday, and we are all really pleased to be in the final seven.

"It is a fantastic feeling to wake up the next day and know that we will be doing it all over again next week.

"For Simon to say that he would be surprised if we weren't in the final was just an amazing compliment. And meeting Mariah Carey was also amazing.

"We are back in the studio now busy rehearsing for next week's show, and have just chosen our best of British track, but you'll have to watch next week to find out what it is.

"It is going to be a wicked night."

Along with their fantastic individual performance, the group also celebrated reaching number one in the charts with the new single Hero, a charity song to raise money for Help for Heroes, which aims to provide care for troops injured in ongoing conflicts – released as a joint effort last week by all 12 finalists.

And Peterborough's young star Aston has also been spotted on TV, advertising a Nintendo Wii game.

The singer uses one of the Wii controllers as a bow and arrow in the promo for Sega's Mario and Sonic At The Olympics. The advert was shown during one of the breaks of X Factor on Saturday.

The next live show will be on ITV1 on Saturday, 15 November.