In mid-July, Alex Warren performed his then-unreleased song ‘Eternity’ for the first time ever. He’s only been putting out music for a few years and, when he took to the stage, was yet to even drop an album. Most people in his position could expect to be playing a small independent venue. Instead, the 24-year-old found himself looking out across the sprawling crowd at London’s arena-sized Alexandra Palace Park.
At the end of his show, the audience was roaring for an encore. “I run out onstage,” he recalls to NME. “I’m out of breath and I go, ‘Hey guys, I’ve never sung this before; this is probably gonna go terribly. Have fun and let’s do it!’” Instead of hearing crickets, he was amazed that the audience quickly picked up on the gorgeous torch song and began singing along to it. “There were people crying in the audience from ‘Eternity’,” he says.
It’s a sign of how much the Californian singer-songwriter means to people, which is hardly surprising when you look at his extraordinary journey from homelessness to TikTok stardom and chart-domination. Even if you haven’t heard of Alex Warren, you’ll know his gargantuan hit single ‘Ordinary’. Released in February, the evocative ballad became the UK’s longest-running Number One single of the 2020s, racking up an astonishing 12 consecutive weeks at the top of the chart.
Now, for the ‘Bose x NME: C25’ mixtape, he’s set to take another leap of faith by recording ‘Eternity’ with an orchestra at the fabulously named Grand Lodge Of Tennessee, an opulent Masonic hall in Nashville. It’s the first time he’s ever worked with a full orchestra. As he has his make-up done ahead of his NME photoshoot at the venue, the singer explains the appeal of the project: “This song is pretty big as it is. It has a lot of build moments. When you listen to an orchestra version, I think it almost pulls the heartstrings a little more.”
‘Ordinary’ won Warren plaudits from Lana Del Rey and Ed Sheeran, but Warren doesn’t seem fazed by his success. After all, this is a man who debuted the track in front of his biggest UK headline audience. Didn’t he find it nerve-wracking to sing the song at Alexandra Palace?
“It would be nerve-wracking if I was in a room with a bunch of people who didn’t like me,” he counters. “This was a room where I felt safe. This was 15,000 people who paid money, who I just gave – in my opinion – a really good show to. This is the moment where I think, ‘I don’t think I bomb if I sound terrible.’ They’re not gonna go home and go, ‘Wow, that guy sucked!’ They’re gonna go, ‘This guy performed this for the first time and it was special; we got to be a part of it.’ I think that’s what matters.”
Even if it had gone badly, he reasons, that would have been worthwhile too: “The only way you get better is by making mistakes. How are you supposed to learn if you don’t fuck up?”
This is a typical sentiment from the singer, who has fearlessly grown up in public. His father died from kidney cancer when Warren was nine. At age 18 he became homeless after his mother, who suffered from alcoholism and died from liver and renal failure in 2021, kicked him out of the house. He was living in a car when he started posting prank videos on social media. His online fame snowballed and soon he joined the Hype House, an LA mansion inhabited by fellow TikTok stars (including future ‘Diet Pepsi’ singer Addison Rae).
These pivots from TikTok personalities to chart domination might seem strange, but Warren was always a musician first and foremost. He tried to make it as a singer on YouTube from the age of 11 but didn’t smash the algorithms until he posted the prank videos. “The one time people cared,” he says, “was when I played a character that wasn’t me. That was super-enabling for me to go, ‘Oh, people want to see this version of myself.’”
As the years rolled by, he felt increasingly alienated from his TikTok prankster persona and so returned to his original passion. Warren poured his love for his wife, the influencer Kouvr Annon, into ‘Ordinary’ and pays devastating tribute to his father on ‘Eternity’ (“It feels like an eternity/Since I had you here with me”), proving that his true self is just as popular as the manufactured one.
‘Eternity’ was released on the same day as ‘You’ll Be Alright, Kid’, Warren’s emotionally charged debut album, which is defined by jagged-edged ballads that pierce the heart. It’s this sense of connection, rather than perfection, that he’s pursuing. “I want people to know that I’m just trying,” he says, “and trying to improve myself. I’m not hiding behind Auto-Tune. I’m just trying to show you authentic music.”
Stay tuned to NME.com/C25 for more on the return of the iconic mixtape