“W
hat I've gone through has put me where I am today,” says Alex Warren. “And I'm really happy with who I am.”
The 25-year-old singer-songwriter has spent the past year on tour, playing shows across the country for the millions of fans he’s gathered since releasing his breakout single “Ordinary,” now streamed more than 2 billion times worldwide. At nearly every performance, he ends up in tears.
“I cry all the time on stage,” he says. “I write songs about loss. To be able to sing them and have people sing them back, it's pretty emotional for sure.”
While, today, Warren spends most of his time in on a tour bus, seven years ago, Warren was living out of his car. With nowhere else to turn, he leaned into what he knew best: music. Ever since he was five, he’d stage Friday-night talent shows for his parents, belting Naked Brothers Band songs in his underwear. But after his father died of cancer when Warren was nine, everything changed. His relationship with his mother deteriorated, and by 17 he was homeless—recording songs for social media anywhere he could, even in gym bathrooms. For a long time, no one noticed.
