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Kalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer and this is the
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Hit Maker Chronicles. I want to tell you about a
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song that topped the Billboard Hot one hundred for ten
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non consecutive weeks in twenty twenty five, became the longest
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running number one on the UK Singles chart of the
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entire twenty twenties, and earned its creator a Grammy nomination
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for Best New Artist. And the person who made it
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he was homeless six years ago, sleeping in friends cars.
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This is the story of alex Warren and Ordinary. Alexander
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Warren Hughes was born September eighteenth, two thousand, in Carlsbad, California.
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When he was nine years old, his father died from
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kidney cancer. His mother was an alcoholic. At eighteen, she
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kicked him out of the house. Everyone gave me shit
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for not having a plan, b Warren told Netflix in
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an interview, but there was no choice. It was either
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do this or be homeless. His conviction actually did result
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in a homeless period. He slept in friends cars. He
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and his girlfriend, a young woman named Coover Anon who'd
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moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles to be with him,
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filmed videos together because it was free, and it made
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them laugh, and it gave them something to focus on
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besides the fact that they were eighteen years old with
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nowhere to live. When I became homeless, I was sleeping
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in cars with my girlfriend and we would film these
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random videos, Warren recalled. I thought she was one of
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the funniest people I've ever met. One night, he posted
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a singing video five views. Then he posted a video
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of him and Couver messing around in a car right
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before bed. He woke up the next morning that video
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had six million views. So he kept filming funny moments, pranks,
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first person vlogs. The content did well, really well. By
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late twenty nineteen, Warren had over six hundred thousand YouTube
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subscribers and three point eight million TikTok followers. In November
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twenty nineteen, Warren co founded the hype House, a Los
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Angeles based TikTok collective where young creators lived together and
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made content. He came up with the name. The group
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included people who would become some of the biggest names
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on the platform, Charlie Demilio, Addison Ray, and others who'd
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collectively amassed billions of views. Almost Immediately, people accused Warren
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of copying YouTuber David Dabrik's video style, his mannerisms, even
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his laugh. The criticism was loud and relentless, but the
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hype House kept growing. By early twenty twenty, Warren was
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nominated for a Streamy Award. He hosted Awesomeness TV's reality
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competition series Next Influencer on YouTube. In twenty twenty two,
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he starred in hype House, Netflix reality series about the collective.
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His role on the show primarily revolved around his struggles
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to maintain his popularity and his attempts to do so
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through prank videos, including staging a fake wedding with Cooover.
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But behind the scenes, things were falling apart. There had
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been a falling out within the collective. Warren later said
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he wasn't being paid for his contributions. By twenty twenty two,
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he left the hiphe House. The group disbanded later that year.
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Here's what's important to understand. Alex Warren always wanted to
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make music. Always. That was the dream. The pranks, the vlogs,
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the hype House, those were means to an end, a
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way to build an audience, a way to survive in
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June twenty twenty one, Warren independently released his debut single,
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One More I Love You, a song he'd started writing
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at age thirteen about his father's death. Nobody cared. He
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kept releasing music, more singles, better production, songs that actually
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meant something to him, and the response was polite disinterest.
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His fans liked the pranks, they liked the relationship content
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with couver, the music not so much. I posted a
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singing video and I got five views, he said, describing
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the early frustration. Then something absurd happened. One day, Warren
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was singing on the toilet. He filmed himself, posted it
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on a random spam account that nobody knew about, not
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his main account, just some burner he'd created. He woke
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up the next morning ten million views. I don't know
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what's up with me, and waking up to a ton
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of views, he laughed. But it happened, and it's the
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best feeling in the world. Finally people were listening to
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him sing, not because he'd marketed it correctly or because
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he'd done everything right, because he'd filmed himself on a
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toilet and posted it to an account nobody followed. That's
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the music industry in twenty twenty five. By twenty twenty four,
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Warren had signed with Atlantic Records. He was releasing music
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more consistently. Singles like Before You Leave Me and Save
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You a Seat were starting to chart, though Modestly Carry
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You Home became his second UK chart entry, peaking at
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number nine. Then in twenty twenty four, Warren went to
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a writing camp. There he wrote a song called Ordinary.
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It was a ballad, a love song about Couver, the
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woman who'd been sleeping in cars with him when they
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were homeless, who'd moved across the Pacific Ocean to be
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with him, who'd stuck with him through every failure and reinvention.
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The song that became Ordinary was his attempt to capture
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what she meant to him, that she made everything feel
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possible even when it wasn't. I knew there was something
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special about the track, Warren said, but when he played
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it for people, the response was lukewarm at best. A
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lot of people were like, Oh, it's a ballad, it's
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a love song, ballad, that's not a single, that's a
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song on the album, that's a feature. You should give
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it to someone else. Nobody believed in it except him,
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so he did what he always does. He pushed it
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on TikTok. The TikTok's got it to do four million
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streams in a day, which was crazy, he said. Then
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he performed it on Netflix's Love Is Blind. The song,
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this slow, emotional ballad about finding someone who makes your
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life feel ordinary in the best possible way, sinked perfectly
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with the reality show about people falling in love, Sight Unseen.
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The song started building slowly, then suddenly. Ordinary was released
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as a single in early twenty twenty five. It entered
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the Billboard Hot one hundred. Then it climbed and climbed,
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and on the week of its peak, it hit number one,
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and it stayed there for ten non consecutive weeks. Let
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me put that in perspective. In twenty twenty five, streaming
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fragmentation means most songs don't stay at number one for
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more than a week or two before something else takes over.
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Ten weeks is nearly unheard of. Songs don't do that
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anymore unless they're cultural events. Ordinary became a cultural event.
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The song also top charts around the world. In the UK,
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it became the longest running number one of the entire
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twenty twenties, surpassing Ed Sheeron's Bad Habits. Even more impressively,
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it became the longest running uninterrupted number one by an
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American male solo artist in UK chart history. By fall
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twenty twenty five, Ordinary had gone triple platinum in the
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United States. Warren performed it with Ed Sheeron, Jelly Roll,
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Luke Comb's, and The Jonas Brothers. He played it on
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the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He took it on an
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international tour called Cheaper Than Therapy that ran from February
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through August twenty twenty five, and in November twenty twenty five,
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when the Grammy nominations were announced, Alex Warren learned he'd
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been nominated for Best New Artist. I bald in my
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wife's arms, he said, for those who didn't believe in
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my music career, the biggest justification ever was the nomination.
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Here's what I find fascinating about Ordinary. It's not a
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traditional hit. It's slower than a song of the summer.
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It's earnest without irony. It has what people have described
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as religious adjacent lyricism, that hopefulness mixed with urgency that
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you hear in contemporary Christian music, even though it's not
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worship music. We drew a lot of inspiration from that.
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Warn't admitted about the composition. The song connects because it's
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about finding someone who makes chaos feel manageable, who makes
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extra ordinary circumstances homelessness, grief, internet fame, public failure feel ordinary, survivable,
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even beautiful. For someone who lost his father at nine,
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was kicked out by his mother at eighteen, slept in cars,
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built and lost in Internet empire, and spent years trying
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to convince people his music mattered. Ordinary isn't boring. Ordinary
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is the dream. The song resonated because millions of people
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feel the same way. We're all trying to survive extraordinary pressures, economic, social, emotional.
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We're all looking for someone or something that makes it
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feel ordinary, possible, bearable. Warren wrote that song for Coover,
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but it turned out he'd written it for everyone. On
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February first, twenty twenty six, Alex Warren performed Ordinary at
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the Grammy Awards. He didn't win Best New Artist, that
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went to Olivia Dean, but he was there, twenty five
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years old, six years removed from sleeping in cars, standing
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on the ground a stage, singing a song that millions
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of people knew by heart. The hype House was long gone.
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Most of the people he'd built that collective with had
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moved on to other things. Some had succeeded in music,
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like Addison Ray, who was also nominated for Best New
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Artists that same year. Others had faded from public view.
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But Warren was still here, still making music, still married
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to Coover. They'd gotten married in June twenty twenty four,
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and she appeared in the Ordinary Music video despite her
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fear of heights, because that's what you do for someone
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you love. His debut album, You'll Be Alright, Kid, came
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out four months before the Grammy nomination. The title is
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both a promise and a prayer, a reminder to himself
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and to anyone listening that whatever you're going through, you'll
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survive it. I started this episode by telling you that
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the person who made one of the biggest hits of
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twenty twenty five was homeless six years ago. But that's
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not quite right. Alex Warren wasn't just homeless. He was grieving.
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He was rejected, He was told his music didn't matter,
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that he was copying someone else, that he should stick
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to pranks, that ordinary wasn't a single, and he kept
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going not because he had a plan, b because he didn't.
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There was no choice. He said it was either do
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this or be homeless, except he did both. He was homeless,
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and he did this anyway. He slept in cars and
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film videos. He lost his father and wrote a song
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about him that nobody listened to. He built an internet
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collective and watched it fall apart. He released music that
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got five views. Then he posted a video of himself
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singing on a toilet, and it got ten million. The
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path from tragedy to triumph is never a straight line.
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It's messy and absurd, and sometimes you have to film
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yourself on a toilet just to get people to listen.
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But if you keep making the thing you believe in,
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if you write the song everyone tells you isn't a single,
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and you push it anyway because you know it's special,
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sometimes the world catches up. Ordinary spent ten weeks at
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number one because it's an extraordinary song about wanting ordinary love.
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It top charts around the world because it speaks to
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a universal human need, the need to feel like everything's
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gonna be okay, And it was made by someone who
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knows exactly what it's like when everything isn't okay, when
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you're eighteen and homeless and your father's dead and your
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mother doesn't want you, and you're sleeping in a car
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with your girlfriend filming videos because it's the only thing
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that makes you laugh. Alex Warren made it through that.
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He married Coover, he built a career, He wrote a
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song that became one of the biggest hits of the year,
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he performed at the Grammys, and when he talks about it,
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he doesn't talk about strategy or virality or TikTok algorithms.
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He talks about how he didn't think things like this
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happened to people who went through things like he did,
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but they do. Sometimes if you refuse to have a
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plan B. If you keep making music even when nobody's listening,
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if you believe in the song everyone tells you to
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give away, You'll be alright, kid. That's not just an
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album title. That's a promise Alex Warren made to himself
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when he was sleeping in cars, and six years later,
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ten weeks at number one and a Grammy nomination later,
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it turned out to be true. How's that for ordinary