Tik Tok Viral Stars - Alex Warren - "Ordinary"

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer and this is the Hit Maker Chronicles. I want to tell you about a song that topped the Billboard Hot one hundred for ten non consecutive weeks in twenty twenty five, became the longest running number one on the UK Singles chart of the entire twenty twenties, and earned its creator a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. And the person who made it he was homeless six years ago, sleeping in friends cars. This is the story of alex Warren and Ordinary. Alexander Warren Hughes was born September eighteenth, two thousand, in Carlsbad, California.

0:47 When he was nine years old, his father died from kidney cancer. His mother was an alcoholic. At eighteen, she kicked him out of the house. Everyone gave me shit for not having a plan, b Warren told Netflix in an interview, but there was no choice. It was either do this or be homeless. His conviction actually did result in a homeless period. He slept in friends cars. He and his girlfriend, a young woman named Coover Anon who'd moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles to be with him, filmed videos together because it was free, and it made them laugh, and it gave them something to focus on besides the fact that they were eighteen years old with nowhere to live. When I became homeless, I was sleeping in cars with my girlfriend and we would film these random videos, Warren recalled. I thought she was one of the funniest people I've ever met. One night, he posted a singing video five views. Then he posted a video of him and Couver messing around in a car right before bed. He woke up the next morning that video had six million views. So he kept filming funny moments, pranks, first person vlogs. The content did well, really well. By late twenty nineteen, Warren had over six hundred thousand YouTube subscribers and three point eight million TikTok followers. In November twenty nineteen, Warren co founded the hype House, a Los Angeles based TikTok collective where young creators lived together and

2:20 made content. He came up with the name. The group included people who would become some of the biggest names on the platform, Charlie Demilio, Addison Ray, and others who'd collectively amassed billions of views. Almost Immediately, people accused Warren of copying YouTuber David Dabrik's video style, his mannerisms, even his laugh. The criticism was loud and relentless, but the hype House kept growing. By early twenty twenty, Warren was nominated for a Streamy Award. He hosted Awesomeness TV's reality competition series Next Influencer on YouTube. In twenty twenty two, he starred in hype House, Netflix reality series about the collective.

3:02 His role on the show primarily revolved around his struggles to maintain his popularity and his attempts to do so through prank videos, including staging a fake wedding with Cooover. But behind the scenes, things were falling apart. There had been a falling out within the collective. Warren later said he wasn't being paid for his contributions. By twenty twenty two, he left the hiphe House. The group disbanded later that year. Here's what's important to understand. Alex Warren always wanted to make music. Always. That was the dream. The pranks, the vlogs, the hype House, those were means to an end, a way to build an audience, a way to survive in June twenty twenty one, Warren independently released his debut single, One More I Love You, a song he'd started writing at age thirteen about his father's death. Nobody cared. He kept releasing music, more singles, better production, songs that actually meant something to him, and the response was polite disinterest.

4:04 His fans liked the pranks, they liked the relationship content with couver, the music not so much. I posted a singing video and I got five views, he said, describing the early frustration. Then something absurd happened. One day, Warren was singing on the toilet. He filmed himself, posted it on a random spam account that nobody knew about, not his main account, just some burner he'd created. He woke up the next morning ten million views. I don't know what's up with me, and waking up to a ton of views, he laughed. But it happened, and it's the best feeling in the world. Finally people were listening to him sing, not because he'd marketed it correctly or because he'd done everything right, because he'd filmed himself on a toilet and posted it to an account nobody followed. That's the music industry in twenty twenty five. By twenty twenty four, Warren had signed with Atlantic Records. He was releasing music more consistently. Singles like Before You Leave Me and Save You a Seat were starting to chart, though Modestly Carry You Home became his second UK chart entry, peaking at number nine. Then in twenty twenty four, Warren went to a writing camp. There he wrote a song called Ordinary.

5:27 It was a ballad, a love song about Couver, the woman who'd been sleeping in cars with him when they were homeless, who'd moved across the Pacific Ocean to be with him, who'd stuck with him through every failure and reinvention. The song that became Ordinary was his attempt to capture what she meant to him, that she made everything feel possible even when it wasn't. I knew there was something special about the track, Warren said, but when he played it for people, the response was lukewarm at best. A lot of people were like, Oh, it's a ballad, it's a love song, ballad, that's not a single, that's a song on the album, that's a feature. You should give it to someone else. Nobody believed in it except him, so he did what he always does. He pushed it on TikTok. The TikTok's got it to do four million streams in a day, which was crazy, he said. Then he performed it on Netflix's Love Is Blind. The song, this slow, emotional ballad about finding someone who makes your life feel ordinary in the best possible way, sinked perfectly with the reality show about people falling in love, Sight Unseen.

6:39 The song started building slowly, then suddenly. Ordinary was released as a single in early twenty twenty five. It entered the Billboard Hot one hundred. Then it climbed and climbed, and on the week of its peak, it hit number one, and it stayed there for ten non consecutive weeks. Let me put that in perspective. In twenty twenty five, streaming fragmentation means most songs don't stay at number one for more than a week or two before something else takes over. Ten weeks is nearly unheard of. Songs don't do that anymore unless they're cultural events. Ordinary became a cultural event.

7:20 The song also top charts around the world. In the UK, it became the longest running number one of the entire twenty twenties, surpassing Ed Sheeron's Bad Habits. Even more impressively, it became the longest running uninterrupted number one by an American male solo artist in UK chart history. By fall twenty twenty five, Ordinary had gone triple platinum in the United States. Warren performed it with Ed Sheeron, Jelly Roll, Luke Comb's, and The Jonas Brothers. He played it on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He took it on an international tour called Cheaper Than Therapy that ran from February through August twenty twenty five, and in November twenty twenty five, when the Grammy nominations were announced, Alex Warren learned he'd been nominated for Best New Artist. I bald in my wife's arms, he said, for those who didn't believe in my music career, the biggest justification ever was the nomination.

8:27 Here's what I find fascinating about Ordinary. It's not a traditional hit. It's slower than a song of the summer. It's earnest without irony. It has what people have described as religious adjacent lyricism, that hopefulness mixed with urgency that you hear in contemporary Christian music, even though it's not worship music. We drew a lot of inspiration from that. Warn't admitted about the composition. The song connects because it's about finding someone who makes chaos feel manageable, who makes extra ordinary circumstances homelessness, grief, internet fame, public failure feel ordinary, survivable, even beautiful. For someone who lost his father at nine, was kicked out by his mother at eighteen, slept in cars, built and lost in Internet empire, and spent years trying to convince people his music mattered. Ordinary isn't boring. Ordinary is the dream. The song resonated because millions of people feel the same way. We're all trying to survive extraordinary pressures, economic, social, emotional.

9:34 We're all looking for someone or something that makes it feel ordinary, possible, bearable. Warren wrote that song for Coover, but it turned out he'd written it for everyone. On February first, twenty twenty six, Alex Warren performed Ordinary at the Grammy Awards. He didn't win Best New Artist, that went to Olivia Dean, but he was there, twenty five years old, six years removed from sleeping in cars, standing on the ground a stage, singing a song that millions of people knew by heart. The hype House was long gone. Most of the people he'd built that collective with had moved on to other things. Some had succeeded in music, like Addison Ray, who was also nominated for Best New Artists that same year. Others had faded from public view.

10:20 But Warren was still here, still making music, still married to Coover. They'd gotten married in June twenty twenty four, and she appeared in the Ordinary Music video despite her fear of heights, because that's what you do for someone you love. His debut album, You'll Be Alright, Kid, came out four months before the Grammy nomination. The title is both a promise and a prayer, a reminder to himself and to anyone listening that whatever you're going through, you'll survive it. I started this episode by telling you that the person who made one of the biggest hits of twenty twenty five was homeless six years ago. But that's not quite right. Alex Warren wasn't just homeless. He was grieving.

11:06 He was rejected, He was told his music didn't matter, that he was copying someone else, that he should stick to pranks, that ordinary wasn't a single, and he kept going not because he had a plan, b because he didn't. There was no choice. He said it was either do this or be homeless, except he did both. He was homeless, and he did this anyway. He slept in cars and film videos. He lost his father and wrote a song about him that nobody listened to. He built an internet collective and watched it fall apart. He released music that got five views. Then he posted a video of himself singing on a toilet, and it got ten million. The path from tragedy to triumph is never a straight line.

11:52 It's messy and absurd, and sometimes you have to film yourself on a toilet just to get people to listen. But if you keep making the thing you believe in, if you write the song everyone tells you isn't a single, and you push it anyway because you know it's special, sometimes the world catches up. Ordinary spent ten weeks at number one because it's an extraordinary song about wanting ordinary love. It top charts around the world because it speaks to a universal human need, the need to feel like everything's gonna be okay, And it was made by someone who knows exactly what it's like when everything isn't okay, when you're eighteen and homeless and your father's dead and your mother doesn't want you, and you're sleeping in a car with your girlfriend filming videos because it's the only thing that makes you laugh. Alex Warren made it through that.

12:40 He married Coover, he built a career, He wrote a song that became one of the biggest hits of the year, he performed at the Grammys, and when he talks about it, he doesn't talk about strategy or virality or TikTok algorithms. He talks about how he didn't think things like this happened to people who went through things like he did, but they do. Sometimes if you refuse to have a plan B. If you keep making music even when nobody's listening, if you believe in the song everyone tells you to give away, You'll be alright, kid. That's not just an album title. That's a promise Alex Warren made to himself when he was sleeping in cars, and six years later, ten weeks at number one and a Grammy nomination later, it turned out to be true. How's that for ordinary