At 18, Alex Warren was homeless, sneaking into the gym of a gated community in his home town of Carlsbad, California, to shower for job interviews and film TikTok videos of himself singing in the bathroom. Six years later he is one of pop’s next potential superstars. His bombastic ballad Ordinary has been No 1 in the UK charts for five weeks, the longest-running chart leader this year, and entered the US Top 10 last week. As soon as he heard the finished version, he was “freaking out – my wife and I listened to it on repeat for our entire drive home, for 45 minutes.”

Ordinary may be Warren’s breakout hit but he’s been famous for a long time. He gained notoriety on social media in his teens ...
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