IT’S ONLY A few hours before Alex Warren plays a crowded room in downtown Los Angeles in early June, and the chart-topping singer behind the massive hit “Ordinary” just passed out from an I.V. experience gone wrong.
“This girl didn’t know what she was doing and she stuck it in wrong and was fishing for a minute and she didn’t get a vein and started pumping shit in, and all of a sudden my arm starts bubbling up and I pass the fuck out,” he recounts later. “I wake up and I’m having an allergic reaction and I don’t know what to do. My throat’s closing. I go on stage in two hours. They had to pump me with drugs just to be able to play the show.”
Luckily, the drugs worked. That night, Warren and his band tore through the singer-songwriter’s catalogue of folk-tinged anthems, including “Ordinary,” the Number One track in the world for the last eight weeks-and-counting that’s made him nearly a household name and broken every record you never knew existed (like, Elvis-level records), including taking the King’s crown for a U.S. singer with the top song for the most consecutive weeks in the U.K.
Warren’s fast rise to the top has come with a schedule to match, from playing eight shows in a row before his L.A. gig on his sold-out Cheaper Than Therapy Global Tour, to constant flights (including one to film a music video after our interview). “I think it’s just a lot of stress in the body and the chords,” Warren says. “I’ve never sang this much in my life either, and so I’ve been doing vocal lessons like three times a week, really trying my best to power through everything and trying my best to really perform every show as if it means the same.”
The 24-year-old will finally drop his full-length album You’ll Be Alright Kid on July 18. The project feels like a continuation and more complete version of his Chapter 1 LP, which was filled with songs steeped in grief and love and loss that he’s worked on for years. “I was so terrified of it failing and having to go back to where I came from, which wasn’t somewhere I really wanted to go,” Warren says of the Chapter 1 songs. Now, he’s ready for what’s next.
You’ll Be Alright Kid is a 21-track album that features previously released songs like “Carry You Home” and “Burning Down,” which combined have well over 626 million streams on Spotify alone. The LP also boasts a stacked guest list of features, including duets with Rosé (“On My Mind”) and Jelly Roll (“Bloodline”), a collaborator who also happens to be Warren’s next-door neighbor in Nashville. “I made [“Bloodline”] for a DJ, and he ended up not wanting it. … Jelly loved it, and the next day he cut it in his garage and then we put it out like two weeks later,” Warren says.
Warren calls Jelly “the biggest hype man in the world.” Warren shares that earlier this year at Stagecoach, Jelly introduced him to stars like Lana Del Rey. “He introduced me at the time and goes, ‘This is Alex. He has the biggest song in the world.’ And at the time, it wasn’t the biggest song in the world. I think he put that into the air.”
Later, Lana even sang the song with him. This happened just a week after he’d performed it with Ed Sheeran. “I was like, there’s no fucking way I’m singing ‘Ordinary’ with Lana Del Rey a week after singing it with Ed Sheeran.” Warren later posted a photo with Lana and Jelly, along with Shaboozey and Machine Gun Kelly.
“I think it’s just weird, like these people know who I am, which is a little fucking strange, considering growing up these were people who helped me out a lot,” Warren says. But these days, his life is full of moments like these — and they’re only becoming more frequent as Warren’s career expands.
AS A KID, Warren says he would listen to worship music and hymns at Catholic school and on the radio. Warren’s dad died when the singer was nine, and he “left all these Seal records and Coldplay records and Rascal Flatts — I’m so obsessed with these vocalists who also write, in my opinion, really anthemic but also meaningful songs.” (Warren wrote “Ordinary” about his wife, Kouvr Annon, and says he also takes inspiration from what the two were listening to when they met, including music from Lewis Capaldi and Sheeran.)
After his father’s death, Warren says, he tried to cope with trauma through music. “I would sit at a piano and not know anything and just try to play chords and try to make rhythms and songs and melodies,” he says. “I did that my entire life and when I turned 18, my mom kicked me out of my house.” Their relationship was fraught: Warren describes his late mother as an “abusive, alcoholic person who needed someone to blame it on, and that was me.”
Warren references grief often in his work. He explores the feeling on his album and on his TikTok, where he’s amassed 18-plus-million followers and billions of likes. “I was writing music and I felt like not many people write music about that and not a lot of people want to talk about daunting truths,” he explains. “People, I think, like my music so much because I’m very honest with the things I’ve gone through, and these are songs to help them, but also heavily applicable by anyone. I think no matter how rich you are, how poor you are, what your status is, everyone can relate to loss. It’s such a broad thing that it’s really powerful. It’s kind of like dancing at a funeral, like taking a traumatic thing, something that’s happened in your life, and being able to turn into something beautiful.”
But as the fans and streams keep rolling in, so do the TikTok comments and the criticism. Some critics have dubbed Warren’s Billboard hit as a song that’s “driving us nuts,” as one outlet put it. Even Warren, who doesn’t seem to not quite realize he’s a star, finds himself poring through the comments section. “There’s some deep thing in me that I have really bad imposter syndrome,” he says. “I’m constantly searching for people who are validating that imposter syndrome … I think the hate is a lot louder than love a lot of times. I think it’s just me mitigating that. I care a lot about what people think of me, which sucks because you don’t want to.” He’s been taking the criticism in stride as best he can. “I think it’s just important for me to keep reminding myself that I’m here for a reason — I deserve this and I’m trying to figure it out.”
FAME IS A FUNNY thing, and to navigate it all, Warren has had someone special to help make sense of what’s happening in Sheeran. The two — who share a label and publishing company — met and played “Ordinary” together at a pub show at Coachella. From there, Sheeran gave Warren his email. “We just talk every day just about random stuff,” Warren says. “I think with all this attention that I’ve been getting comes a lot of hate, and it’s something really difficult for me to maneuver, but also touring, having a wife and a life outside of touring is such a difficult dynamic and it’s such a weird thing where, like not many therapists understand it either, and to be able to have someone like Ed who has been doing this his entire life … he’s seen everything. He’s done everything.”
Warren describes Sheeran as an “open book,” and says that the star “loves to give advice.” “He loves to explain what he’s done and how he got over things,” Warren explains. “I think I look at him and he’s got a happy family and kids and he’s got everything any person could ever want. I think it’s really, really important to be able to pick that person’s brain and he’s a good friend of mine now, but also a great mentor.”
Playing with Sheeran was one of many pinch-me moments the songwriter has experienced leading up to the release of his new LP, most recently of which included a star-making performance of “Ordinary” at the American Music Awards, backed by a euphoric choir and pyrotechnics. Warren says even Heidi Klum and Nikki Glaser approved of the set — and even himself.
“I remember once I got to the final chorus in my head, I was like, ‘You did it. Good shit, dude. Now just don’t fuck it up.’”
SHORTLY AFTER 10 P.M. at Warren’s downtown L.A. show, the crowd finally got to hear the song they’d waited for all night. As Warren belted “Ordinary”s climactic chorus, perfectly timed confetti shot into the sky as some fans raised their hands up into the air as if reaching for the angels up in the clouds Warren sings about.
“Ladies and gentleman, you’ve been absolutely amazing tonight, and I want to say thank you so, so, so much,” Warren told his fans. “If you can, sing this as loud as you fucking can, yeah? Let’s do it.”
After Warren drops his album, he’ll take the new project back out onto the road for the extended run of his tour. Whatever the next phase is, Warren sounds alright, just where he’s at.
“I think if I just stayed here, I’d be so happy,” he says. “That’s the thing … if things get better from here, that’s amazing. But I do what I love. I’m married to the person I love. I live where I love. I can’t imagine asking for more. I think right where I am is really good, and if I can continue doing this for the rest of my life, I would be so stoked.”
