From Chipotle To The WWE, Alex Warren Is Omnipresent — Even If He Admits He’s ‘The Most Average White Dude You Could Ever Think Of’

When Alex Warren’s breakthrough hit, “Ordinary,” notched a sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-July, it drew a reaction from one of the most famous musicians in the world. “Suppressor on the 1 spot,” Drake posted on Instagram after the song kept his own single, “What Did I Miss?,” out of the top position.

Days later, Warren became the first artist to premiere an album at Chipotle Mexican Grill, debuting his new set, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, across nearly 4,000 locations of the fast-­casual chain (and receiving a card that lets him eat free there for life). Then, at the end of the month, the WWE used “Ordinary” to soundtrack its video tribute to Hulk Hogan following the wrestler’s death.

“The last six months of my life have been really weird,” Warren says, talking from his Nashville home in early September before he returns to his sold-out tour.

That’s a major understatement coming from the 25-year-old Chatsworth, Calif., native, who has dominated radio and digital service providers for months with the uncynical ode to a deeply transformative love that he released in February. Written for his wife, social media influencer Kouvr Annon, the swelling, burly track — think Hozier crossed with Imagine Dragons — spent 10 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, a feat achieved by only 4% of chart-toppers in the chart’s 67-year history. In the United Kingdom, it spent 13 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Official Singles Chart, the longest run for a solo U.S. male artist since 1955.

The song’s popularity has made the Atlantic Records artist a pop star — and a contender for several Grammy nominations, including best new artist. “It’s surreal. I haven’t caught up with it yet,” Warren says of the commotion surrounding him and the song. “I don’t look like a pop star. I think I look like, literally, the most average white dude you could ever think of. If you walk into a Buc-ee’s at 3 a.m., there’s four dudes who look just like me. When I get done touring and I take a month or so off, I think I’m going to have a day of reckoning where I just start bawling my eyes out, going, ‘What is life?’ ”

Billboard also crowned “Ordinary” the Song of the Summer, with the tune topping the 20-position weekly chart all 14 weeks during the season.

“I truly am just as shocked as everyone else,” he says of scoring the Song of the Summer. But at the same time, he understands the hit’s resonance. “I think every single year there’s always that wedding song or love song. I think ‘Ordinary,’ sonically, has been this exciting storytelling record. It’s a song about love and love is killing it right now.” With its references to holy water and angels, its spiritual elements have also broadened its appeal. “I think being able to see how it’s perceived in so many lights maybe answers the question of how it’s the song of the summer,” Warren reasons. (Though the track pulls in elements of worship music, “I’m a Christian, but I’m not a Christian artist,” he stresses. Despite his love for artists like Brandon Lake and Forrest Frank, he has no plans to make a contemporary Christian album.)

Unlike many previous Songs of the Summer, “Ordinary” isn’t an uptempo bop — and perhaps because of that, it has polarized audiences, some of whom have also criticized it as derivative. But the lack of universal acclaim doesn’t annoy Warren. Rather, what troubles him are the claims that the song’s success has been manufactured. “It bothers me when people make things up. One of the popular ones for a long time was ‘This guy buys his streams.’ And ‘His label buys his tickets; that’s why he sells out arenas.’ I’m like, ‘Damn, I worked my booty off,’ ” he says. “These are people looking for reasons not to like you, and if they choose to believe something that’s not true, I mean, I can’t stop them from believing that.”

In 2019, Warren co-founded The Hype House, a collective of influencers popular on TikTok that also included Addison Rae, HUDDY and Charli D’Amelio and whose antics at a shared Ventura County mansion were chronicled in a 2022 Netflix docuseries. Despite his commercial and critical musical accomplishments today — Warren took home the Moon Person for best new artist at the MTV Video Music Awards in September — he knows that some people still dismiss him because of his influencer roots. He understands the skepticism.

“Every influencer who goes into music probably should get it,” he says. “I’ve watched a lot of people who go, ‘I’m going to be a singer now,’ and they kind of just expect everything to be handed to them. Why on earth would you think I’m any different?”

But Warren, who has taken years of vocal, music theory, guitar and piano lessons, is different. “I’ve put in my 10,000 hours now to the point where, yeah, I wish I did get more of a fair shake,” he says.

Warren began writing when he was 13, partly to cope with his father’s death from cancer four years earlier. Unable as a 9-year-old to deal with the profound gravity of his father’s final moments, Warren says he “started messing with him when he was loopy on so many drugs because I thought it was funny, instead of being able to say goodbye to my dad and have a conversation with him.” To forget his father had died, he “never, never talked about it.”

As Warren reached adolescence, the sorrow caught up with him when unknowing friends would ask why his dad didn’t drive him to school or when he watched one of his sisters go to a daddy-daughter dance without their father. That was when Warren began writing songs. “I started picking up the piano and guitar and playing chords, trying to deal with that grief,” he says.

But the worst wasn’t over. Warren’s mother, who struggled with substance abuse, threw him out of the house when he was 18, and he lived in his car for months. She died of liver and renal failure when he was 21, their relationship unreconciled.

Those early tragedies have given him perspective when it comes to the ups and downs of the music business, and they inform every song he writes. “My career is amazing, but at the same time, I think everything that I’ve lost — my parents, my childhood — that’s just something that has led me to be the person I am today, the musician I am today, and I have a story to tell and hopefully [can] help some people,” he says.

Warren co-wrote every song on his 2024 EP, You’ll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter One), and this year’s full-length follow-up, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, and he knows his penchant for taking on serious topics — his first single under Atlantic, “Headlights,” dealt with anxiety, while his first Hot 100 entry, “Burning Down,” examined betrayal — may not appeal to everyone. “I’m a dude who writes love songs and songs about his dead parents, and some people are going to be like, ‘Pack it up. I want to go twerk at my local bar or club,’ ” he says.

But many others draw strength from what Warren has survived. The title of his current tour, Cheaper Than Therapy, may be somewhat tongue in cheek, but it also addresses the communal healing powers of music for him and his audience.

“There’s videos on the internet of me bawling my eyes out onstage, which is so funny because I don’t really cry in person,” he says. “I spent a lot of my childhood crying, and now I’m kind of like numb to it.” But when he plays aching songs of loss like “Eternity,” “Chasing Shadows” or “Save You a Seat” and hears the audience “screaming my lyrics to me about my parents, it’s very emotional,” he says. “Everyone in that room understands the feeling of losing that person in your life, whether it’s your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, your dog, anything, and so to be able to understand and be able to process that with people, it’s almost like group therapy.” (Fittingly, through his partnership with the nonprofit PLUS1, Warren is contributing $1 from every ticket sold to Camp Kesem, which provides free camps and programs for kids with parents fighting cancer.)

Not that Warren’s show is one big sob fest. He intersperses stories and jokes between songs to create a “roller coaster” of emotions, crowd-pleasing adjustments he made following a 2024 college show opening for Flo Rida where Warren was booed loudly by men whom he suspects had been dragged there by their girlfriends. The answer, he discovered, was to be his unedited, vulnerable, self-deprecating self. “I used to throw up before a show out of anxiety, hoping they’d like me. I always filtered myself,” he says. “I realized if I just be myself and make the [dark] jokes that I normally would make, it kind of throws people off guard. The dudes tend to love it. I found a lot of inspiration with Lewis Capaldi and the jokes he tells and how he’s just unironically himself.”

In addition to the sold-out shows and chart-­topping success, the past year has brought other pinch-me moments, including singing “Ordinary” onstage with Luke Combs at Lollapalooza in July. “I was terrified because Luke is one of those vocalists where he’s going to make my song sound better when he sings it,” he says. “Luke is one of those people where I’m like, ‘F–k! You just Kelly Clarkson’d my ass!’ ” The two artists have talked about collaborating further but have other business to handle first: “He’s going to take me hunting for the first time because I’ve never hunted,” Warren says.

Jelly Roll, who duets with Warren on “Bloodline,” released in May, has also taken Warren under his wing. Having moved with his wife to Nashville a little under a year ago, Warren lives one exit away from Jelly, and they’ve forged their friendship due to their difficult teen years — Jelly was incarcerated for much of the time between the ages of 14 and 24. “I’ve been able to text him a lot of times. I probably text him too much,” Warren says. “It’s been a blessing to be able to learn from him, especially regarding life lessons. We both come from a pretty broken past. He has a special place in my heart.”

Now that Warren has reached a pinnacle, speculation has begun as to whether he can replicate the success of “Ordinary.” But he’s unconcerned. “I’m kind of like, ‘OK, cool. I don’t need another one.’ I’m happy. I never thought I’d get one [hit]. If another one happens, that’s amazing, but at least I know that I’ve been able to do it once. If I die a one-hit wonder, thank God. It’s just a cool thing and I could not ask for more.”

Either way, he’ll still have his Chipotle free-for-life card — even if he doesn’t like using it. “I go every day, even before [the card],” he says. “I don’t even use the card because I’ll be like, ‘Is this douchey if I hand them a card and be like, “My meal’s free” ’? I pay.”

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.