Alex Warren on Honoring His Parents on ‘WILDCHILD’ & His Wife’s Reaction to Another Love Song: ‘She’s Like, ‘I Get It, You Like Me”

The "Ordinary" singer stops by the Billboard News studio to talk inspiration & pending fatherhood.

When making his new album WILDCHILD, out Friday (Aug. 28), Alex Warren had a very specific road map.

“This album was heavily inspired by my live shows,” he says in a new Billboard News interview. “Funny enough, whenever I play a show, it’s very fun and people dance, and then, all of a sudden, they cry and then they laugh. And for me, I loved that whiplash of emotions every few minutes.”

Yet, there is still a sense of cohesion on the new Atlantic set. “You’re going to listen to the first song, the second song, and they’re going to be sonically so different, and they’re going to be so different what I’m talking about,” he continues. “But you’re going to feel like it’s still a story that you can pay attention to.”

And that story is influenced by Warren’s relationship with his parents. His father, who called him “wild child,” died when Warren was 9, but his dad comes back to life on WILDCHILD through audio snippets incorporated into the album from videos he made for Warren.