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Amid the many familiar names in the top 10 at present, there’s one that stands out as this year’s biggest who’s that? breakout so far. Nestled in the No. 2 position on Billboard’s Top 100, and poised to possibly take over the top spot, is Alex Warren’s brooding ballad, “Ordinary,” which explores an extraordinary rush of romantic love and spiritual connection. Sandwiched between two very busy-sounding superstar duets (Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s’ “Luther,” and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die with a Smile”), the haunting “Ordinary” would come off as the outlier on a sparkly pop chart, even if Warren himself wasn’t an anomaly as the least known quantity in these heady climes.
“I am so forever grateful for all the support and will never stop saying thank you,” says Warren from his home in Los Angeles regarding “Ordinary,” his success as a songwriter and his time spent as a top tier TikTok creative. “I wouldn’t have any of this if it weren’t for my fans, so I am so appreciative.”
Warren’s luminous voice and lit-from-within songcraft contribute to an unmistakable hit in which the 24-year-old Californian seems able to leap from unutterable sadness to unmitigated joy. These are dynamics he’s already experienced in a big way in his young life.
Carlsbad, CA-born and Catholic, Warren’s fortunes weren’t always so fantastic, as he had a hard luck life until his latter teens. His dad died from kidney cancer when Alex was 9, leaving him, his brother and two sisters to deal with an alcoholic mom who kicked him out of the house by 18 (his mom died when Alex turned 21).
“I wanted to be a singer since I was a kid and my dad bought me my first guitar,” says Warren. “Funny enough, I didn’t start writing until he passed. Music became an outlet for me to process my trauma.”
Homeless and sleeping in cars (alone, until meeting his wife-to-be), Warren singularly maintained twin passions – writing and posting songs to Vine, filming skateboard and prank clips to YouTube and TikTok – until meeting a handful of like-minded video makers. With these TikTok-ers, Warren co-founded the Hype House collective and moved together into a Los Angeles McMansion, the basis of which became an actual Netflix reality series of the same name in early 2022.
“Hype House was like my college, but for social media,” he says. “It helped me learn how to create content that resonates with an audience and can captivate people. Also, being homeless was a great motivator.”
By mid-2022, fortune smiled wider as Warren’s personal YouTube channel hosted nearly 3 million subscribers and his TikTok account had 14 million followers — mainly due to his having posted solitary songs such as “One More I Love You” (about the death of his father), “Screaming Underwater” and “Remember Me Happy” throughout 2021. “I kept writing, keeping things to myself until one day I decided to post a video online of me singing and it went viral,” he says of these early tracks.
By summer 2022, Warren left Hype House, signed with Atlantic Records and self-produced a documentary mini-series, “I Hope You’re Proud,” about writing and recording his own music. From there, Warren proceeded to drop singles throughout 2023 like “Headlights,” “Give You Love,” “Chasing Shadows” and “Change Your Mind” – the latter track about his brother’s struggles with the painful youth with absent parents the brothers shared. After additional singles dropped throughout 2024 — including “Burning Down,” his first track to hit Billboard’s Hot 100, along with a separate remix featuring Joe Jonas — Warren’s first album, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1),” was released in September.
“Ordinary,” a fresh single not from his debut album, dropped in early February, The moon-heavy imagery of its video, and Warren’s performance of the holy romantic ballad during Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” season 8 reunion, pushed his devotional track upward to where it sits today.
“We wrote ‘Ordinary’ in December last year, started teasing it in January, and released it in February,” says Warren on the day before re-commencing his Cheaper Than Therapy tour in Cleveland.
“In the music industry, that’s a crazy fast turnaround, but we did that because we knew immediately how good it was. I’ve never had a song so quickly ‘click’ and I just had to put it out as soon as possible.”
The power of “Ordinary” stems from its being a radiant love song touching on the start of the relationship with his now-wife, and how her extraordinary-ness lifted the singer. There is, however, “Ordinary’s” seeming connection to God and religion. Is the “holy water’s watered down” hinting at something sacred, along with lyrics touching on angels and the reverence of “kissing the ground” and “returning me to dust”?
“I grew up Christian, and listened to lots of gospel music with my family, so hints of worship music definitely make their way into my songs,” he says of “Ordinary” being touched by something or someone higher. “I pull influences from a lot of different things in life to build out my music, and that’s definitely one of them.”
Does Warren believe his faith touches on the rest of his songwriting catalog? Is he OK when people refer to his music as “sacred” or “devotional”?
“I have had a rocky relationship with Christianity,” he states. “After losing my dad, I constantly questioned a God that would take him from me. After watching my mom drink herself to death, I truly questioned things again. But as time has gone on, I realized that the things I have endured led me to where I am today. I would have never met my wife and I wouldn’t have a career. I also realized that you have to have tragedy to appreciate the things in life, and that I can’t pick and choose those things. I love my life and also love my God and I thank my religion because I’m able to, in my opinion, keep my parents close to me through all of this.”
There are additional influences on Warren’s sound to go with God. The deep resonance of his voice, the supple nuances of his melodies — they’re unique, and without easy reference.
“I’ve always loved Ed Sheeran, Adele and Lewis Capaldi,” he says. “I would say those were my biggest influences growing up and when I started to write music. Which is why getting to work with Ed, and now call him a friend, is one of the coolest things to happen.
Sheeran did a pop-up set during April’s Coachella and performed “Ordinary” with Warren, whereupon the pop superstar wrote in the comments section: “There’s like one song every year that blows my socks off, and it’s this one… Such an incredible song and talent, such an honour having you down man, and congrats on everything, so deserved.”
For a guy who found initial success independently via TikTok and through posting his own songs onto social media, Warren is very cool about connecting with the big media likes of Netflix and Atlantic, along with managerial giant Brian Sokolik of Odd Projects.
What did Atlantic and Odd Projects offer Warren that he didn’t already have as an independent? Stability and accessibility, as well as offering a sounding board for bigger ideas and seemingly self-strategized goals.
“I’m fortunate enough to have slowly built my own team around me that helps me with everything, and signing to Atlantic just made everything more accessible,” he states. “I do mostly everything on my own, and then the label comes in and helps make things happen. Brian has been my manager since the start of all this, and I couldn’t wish for a better person to join me on this journey. No task is too small for him and he’s really important to everything I’ve accomplished.”
Take for example, “Burning Down,” the first single plucked from his debut album, his first song to appear on the Billboard Hot 100, and a track that won a second version with vocalist Joe Jonas.
“I think as soon as we wrote ‘Burning Down’ in the studio, we knew it would be the next single. A lot of times you know right away and it just feels right. Joe came along after the release, and my team mentioned he was a fan of the song and wanted to work together. Obviously, I grew up loving the Jonas Brothers, so it was an obvious yes, and I’m so glad we did it and became such good friends.”
Beyond Odd Projects and the folks at Atlantic, his team consists of co-writers and producers Aaron Yaron, Cal Shapiro and Mags Duval, all of whom worked with Warren on “Ordinary,” “Burning Down” and many of his album songs and singles.
“They have become the team that I write everything with, and I couldn’t make these songs so special without them,” says Warren of his brain trust of close collaborators. “We all get together and just talk about stories, life, feelings, and then start building a song out. We have such a good routine and we all work well together.”
And Warren’s entire team is working overtime, not only on his current tour, but on what seems like his next album — a “Chapter 2,” perhaps.
“We have a lot up our sleeves for the next few months,” Warren says, speaking singularly and collectively. “I teased a duet with Jelly Roll at Stagecoach called ‘Bloodline’ that we’ll have out soon, as the reaction to that has been amazing. I think that I’ve grown a lot with the songs I’m writing now, and that there’s so much more variety, but it’s all fitting together perfectly for this next project that we’re working on.”
English (US) ·