New York (AP) — It jolted the winter, came alive in the spring, dominated the summer and went three-times platinum in the fall. Alex Warren's bombastic ballad “Ordinary” is, by many measures, a defining song of 2025. It's also an unusual hit: slower than a traditional song of the summer, full of gloss, an ascendent hook and inoffensive, religious-adjacent lyricism.
For those reasons, “Ordinary” has fast-tracked the 25-year-old singer/songwriter into
mainstream musical fame, coming to a head in November when he earned his first Grammy nomination. The nomination for best new artist arrived just four months after the release of his debut album, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid.”
“I bawled in my wife's arms,” he said of the moment he found out about the nomination. For those who didn't believe in his music career, he says, “the biggest justification ever was the nomination.”
Most know Warren for “Ordinary,” but fame is not new for him. Before the chart-topping hit, Warren made a name for himself as a social media prankster in the TikTok collective “Hype House.” And while that past might seem at odds with his new public persona, Warren always exuded perspicacity, the result of a troubled childhood that separated him from his comedic cohort. His father died of cancer when he was 9, he says, and his mother of complications due to alcoholism. A period of homelessness followed in his teens, before the TikTok fame.
Still, he's remained curious and playful. At The Associated Press headquarters in New York, he chatted with staff and made disarming, self-deprecating comments. An example: In preparation to see the singer Shawn Mendes later, he dosed himself in cologne. “I need to smell as good as Shawn Mendes looks,” he joked.
Social media success doesn't always yield a creative career — consider Warren and the innovative Addison Rae, a fellow best new artist nominee, exceptions to the rule — but it did prime him for the life he leads now. “Everything that I went through back then definitely allowed me to do this,” he says.
Growing up online — and having “different versions” of himself presented on social media — has “definitely allowed me to now be unequivocally myself,” he says.
Warren wrote “Ordinary” a year ago at a writing camp. He says he knew there was something special about the track — though he and his collaborators were mostly alone in that feeling. “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,’” he recalls. But he pushed it on TikTok, and soon, it connected.
“The TikToks got it to do 4 million streams in a day, which was crazy,” he said. Then he performed it on Netflix's “Love Is Blind.” He played it with Ed Sheeran,Jelly Roll, Luke Combs and the Jonas Brothers. It built to ubiquity.
The song has connected, he theorizes, not only for its anthemic chorus. There's a “hopefulness but also urgency” to the song, he says, a sensibility some listeners have likened to Christian music. And while it isn't worship music, “We drew a lot of inspiration from that,” he says of its composition.
That spirit carries throughout his debut album, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid.” Warren returns to the record often and learns more about himself with each listen. “To me, these songs are just real, and I hope that people listen to this record and learn something about themselves,” he says. “That’s the biggest thing. That was for me. It was me finding out who I was, and who I wanted to be as a husband, as a friend, as a father, and that’s kind of what I got out of it. And I hope someone gets something else out of that, you know?”
But for now, he's enjoying the ride that “Ordinary” and his success has provided.
“How often is someone gonna be in this position?” he asks. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, to take advantage of a cool moment that I’ve had, and I’m hoping that it can continue. And I hope that my songs continue to do well, and I continue to be able to write about the things that go on in my life. And if not, at least I can say I took full advantage of everything.”
And in February, it'll take him to the Grammys.
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The 68th Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 1, 2026, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The show will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+. For more coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/grammy-awards.
