Carlsbad, CA · pop

Alex Warren

2 festivals played ↓

'Ordinary' made the content-creator-turned-balladeer a genuine arena act — big-lunged folk-pop hymns.

Alex Warren was born Alexander Warren Hughes on September 18, 2000, in Carlsbad, California, one of four siblings. His father died of kidney cancer when he was nine. His mother, whom he has described as an alcoholic, kicked him out at eighteen, leaving him homeless and sleeping in friends' cars; she died in 2021. He was raised Catholic.

He started making YouTube videos at ten and posting skateboarding clips to Instagram in 2015. In 2019 he co-founded the Los Angeles collective The Hype House, giving the group its name, and later starred in Netflix's series about it. He also hosts a podcast called Locked in with Alex Warren. That online following became the base he later moved into music.

His songs are largely mid-tempo pop with folk and gospel inflections, built from acoustic guitar, piano and stacked backing vocals in choruses written to be sung back. His lyrics draw heavily on his own life, including the deaths of both parents, and that autobiographical directness has been central to his appeal.

Warren released his debut single, 'One More I Love You,' independently in 2021, a song about his father's death that he had begun writing at thirteen. He signed with Atlantic Records in 2022 and issued 'Headlights' as his first single for the label. His 2024 single 'Burning Down,' from the EP You'll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1), became his first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.

'Ordinary' followed in 2025 and topped the Hot 100 along with charts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, moving Warren from online personality to touring act playing large rooms. The single earned him a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

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