California-born singer-songwriter Alex Warren, 24, has struck a chord with hits like his No. 1 single “Ordinary,” driven by his deep connection to the raw edges of human emotion.
At 9 years old, Warren lost his father to kidney cancer, a tragedy that marked the beginning of a turbulent adolescence. Bullied in high school, he was forced to navigate life on his own after being kicked out by his mother, who struggled with alcoholism, at 17. She died in 2021, closing a chapter of profound personal loss.
Warren’s 21-track album, “You’ll Be Alright Kid,” released in July, reflects his journey to overcome the challenges of a kid who had been “badly bullied” and was “just trying to be liked.”
Last year, Warren married Kouvr Annon, a fellow alum of the Hype House, a now-defunct Los Angeles-based social media collective that helped launch both their careers. He met her on Snapchat when he was 18, homeless and living in his car. Now, they live in Nashville’s suburbs.
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out why life wasn’t good to me,” Warren says. “So I love giving people new ways to feel and think about themselves and their lives.
“My struggles made me who I am today,” he continues. “The trajectory of my arrival at who I am, who I know and what I’m going to be allows me to write songs that feel like they’re meant to teach others how to endure their lives.”
Alex Warren’s ‘Ordinary’ hit and rise to fame
Though Warren is an earnest storyteller, much of his success feels designed for pop consumption.
“Because I come from a place where I’ve achieved success while also being unproven as a musician, I have a lot to prove,” Warren says. “The people pleaser in me is so blessed that everyone sees something in me and wants to make sure they don’t regret that feeling.”
After spending three years in the Hype House, Warren appeared in an eight-episode Netflix docudrama filmed at the mansion.
His musical style, he says, was forged in the 2010s. His tastes revolved around the intersection of alternative pop, ambient heavy bass, folk and tropical house.
In those days, Warren was a depressed teenager sorting through his emotions by learning how to play piano, recrafting songs he learned by ear and writing lyrics that matched their composition, meter and rhyme.
“My music works to contextualize emotions that most people don’t experience,” Warren says.
Warren began posting everything from skateboarding content to prank videos to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. In under five years, he gained over four million followers and became a Hype House cofounder.
“Instead of being a musician who’s trying to remain ominously mysterious, I’m trying to be who I am and present my real backstory honestly by presenting the emotional place I was in when I wrote these songs,” Warren says.
The album’s production and songwriting team includes Mags Duval, Cal Shapiro and Adam Yaron. Collaborators include country and rock chart-topper Jelly Roll (for the folksy “Bloodline”), K-pop favorite and Blackpink member Rosé (“On My Mind”) and Jonas Brothers member Joe Jonas (“Burning Down”).
“Music that authentically reflects people’s feelings about coming to terms with struggling to try to get better and move forward is breaking through on both radio and TikTok right now,” Warren says.
Warren on his wife inspiring ‘Ordinary’ and ‘Carry You Home’
Written in December 2024 and released two months later, “Ordinary” captures Warren’s five-year growth and celebrates the joy he’s found in marriage.
“It’s a special song that I couldn’t sit on because it reminds people of an emotion they can’t quite put their finger on, because it’s one they’ve had, forgotten, then thought they could never experience themselves,” he says.
“Carry You Home,” released last year, works alongside “Ordinary,” he says, and was on the soundtrack at his June 2024 wedding.
“The song is a love anthem that depicts how we’ll find each other, and I’ll carry her home in every lifetime that we’ll live,” Warren says. “It took me two years to re-channel my inspirations from the grief I’ve felt over losing my parents to falling in love. Now the songs keep coming because I’m authentically talking about how I’ve become who I am because of what I’ve found because of who I’m with.”
Whether Warren’s sound will veer toward country like so many acts before him remains to be seen. Though he says he was “never a country music guy growing up,” he says country music works with his art because the genre is built on songs that, like his, are “deep, honest, vocal-centric and organically melodic.”
“I’m one of so many (Billboard No. 1-charting) artists who are in Nashville right now because the town and its music industry are built on the best singers, most talented songwriters and welcoming people,” Warren says. “A bottom-tier country artist or the unknown artist I hear at dinner could out-sing me any day of the week.”
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: With ‘Ordinary,’ Alex Warren channels grief into a breakout anthem
