Alex Warren is having an amazing year that deserves to be celebrated. But in a chat for Billboard with Wine About It podcaster QTCinderella, the 24-year-old singer said he hasn’t really had time to process his rocket ride to fame, including his breakthrough song “Ordinary” reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, in addition to nine weeks atop the Billboard Global 200 and seven at the peak of the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart.
“I didn’t do anything, actually,” Warren admits about the lack of a party to mark his achievements in the video chat you can see in full above, during which he reveals he’s already written a song for his ultimate dream collaborator. “It didn’t feel real, that’s the thing,” he adds, making fun of the viral “industry plant” rumors that have dogged the former Hype House member who began his career as a skateboarding YouTuber at age 10.
The pair met up at an In-N-Out Burger for a meat-and-potatoes breakfast and a chat, where QT “bullied” the singer about his fussy order of “burger well-done, bun extra toasted, add chopped chilis, no cheese, no tomato, add whole grilled onion, animal style, with sauce.” Warren also describes his pre-fame days of filling up water cups with soda at the beloved burger franchise when he was briefly lived in his car before his pop blow-up.
In addition to touching on how Warren met his wife — fellow former Hype House member Kouvr Annon — when he was 18, QT notes that Warren wrote “Ordinary” about the couple’s admittedly “out of the ordinary” relationship. “The problem is, when I write songs my wife hears them through the walls and the choir on all my records is just me and my friends, so for an hour and a half it’s just me and my friends making noises,” Warren explains about his wife’s patience with his unusual recording process.
“By the end of it she’s heard the song in every variation, every voice crack, me learning the song, the stupid verses we have and then we fix them, so by the end she’s like, ‘wow, honey super nice!,’” he says, noting that with “Ordinary” Annon was “super into it.”
The singer, who talks about the pain of losing both his parents, says he feels like his struggles have made it so he can write music “for everyone. I’ve been on both sides. I’ve now been able to find some success and do really well for myself and my wife and I’ve also been able to not have any money and not know who I was going to feed my wife,” he says. “When you write a song you want it to apply to as many people as possible.”
His mouth full of a giant bite of his bespoke burger, Warren excitedly talks about the upcoming (July 18) release of his debut full-length studio album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, which he confirms is a continuation of his 2024 EP, You’ll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1). “The first one did so well I really don’t want to go downhill,” he explains. “Really just sticking on to it. It’s like when there’s a sequel and there’s four versions of it and they don’t know when to stop.”
He says the EP was all the songs he’d written up to this point, while the 21-track album is about “trying out different sounds” and, if he’s being honest, is the equivalent of the answer to what he would say to his younger self if he could talk to him now. “It sounds like I’m gonna cry when I listen to it,” QT says. “Only a few times,” Warren assures her.
Asked to manifest a bucket list collab that would make his “life complete,” Warren says without hesitation that it is Billie Eilish. “She’s never going to do it,” he says. “I wrote this song I think she’d sound perfect on, but it’s just something that I don’t think will ever happen.”
The interview also touches on Warren’s upbeat track with his neighbor Jelly Roll on “Bloodline,” his album’s duet with BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ on “On My Mind” and jamming with his all-time idol Ed Sheeran at this year’s Coachella, where they played Warren’s “Ordinary” at Ed’s “Old Phone Pub” pop-up.