March 22, 2026

Tik Tok Viral Stars - Alex Warren - "Ordinary"

Tik Tok Viral Stars - Alex Warren - "Ordinary"
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The ultimate underdog story. Homeless at 18 after losing his father to cancer and being kicked out by his alcoholic mother. Co-founded the Hype House with now-wife Kouvr. Nobody cared about his music until he filmed himself singing on a toilet on a burner account (10M views). Wrote "Ordinary" for Kouvr, everyone said it wasn't a single, pushed it anyway. Synced to Love Is Blind, topped Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks, became longest-running #1 UK Singles Chart of the 2020s. Grammy-nominated. Garrett's wrap-up: "Sometimes ordinary is the most extraordinary thing you can achieve."

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WEBVTT

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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