Strange singer Alex Warren was homeless and sleeping in buddies’ automobiles

Alex Warren is on prime of the world.

Strange, a track he wrote for his spouse Kouvr after their wedding ceremony final 12 months, is at primary in six completely different international locations.

He has two extra songs within the UK Prime 40, and his UK tour has been upgraded to five,000-capacity venues, on account of insatiable demand.

Backstage on the Hammersmith Apollo, the Californian singer is endearingly, humbly bewildered by the entire thing.

“All of that is occurring actually rapidly,” he says. “I solely wrote Strange three months in the past. I am truthfully blown away.”

However the 24-year-old did not arrive out of nowhere.

He is one of many founders of the Hype Home – a collaborative TikTok group who lived and labored collectively within the Los Angeles hills and shepherded hundreds of thousands of youngsters although the pandemic.

You can simply dismiss him as one more social media influencer attempting to interrupt into the music business. It is an accusation he is conscious of, and ready for.

“I watched lots of people, a number of TikTokkers, make music and there was no which means behind it. It was simply one thing they determined to do,” he says.

“However I needed to put in writing about actual issues. Nobody else can sing my songs. I do not take different individuals’s demos. That is all mine.”

Even a passing look at his discography proves him proper.

Warren’s enviornment pop anthems are searingly sincere, virtually to a fault, drawing on his difficult childhood, and fairytale romance with Kouvr.

His father died when he was 9 years previous, after an extended battle with kidney most cancers. The loss despatched his mom spiralling into alcoholism, one thing Warren solely realised when he tried to clear up one in all her espresso mugs.

“It turned out to be alcohol,” he says. “And the subsequent day it was alcohol, and the subsequent day it was alcohol, and at 4am it was alcohol, and after we have been driving, it was alcohol.”

When he referred to as her out on it, the dependancy turned to abuse.

“Each individual scuffling with dependancy wants somebody responsible it on, in addition to themselves, and I turned that individual,” he says.

When he was 18, she kicked him out. He was broke and homeless. Pals let him sleep of their automobiles – by no means their homes, as a result of his mum had satisfied their mother and father he was a trouble-maker.

Across the identical time, he was launched to Instagram mannequin Kouvr Annon by a pal on Snapchat.

“We simply clicked immediately,” he says. “I felt I may inform her all the pieces, simply after our first dialog.”

Inside 4 months, Kouvr left her household in Hawaii, flew out to California and began residing with Warren in a automobile.

Then, as now, they’re an exceptionally cute couple – tender and humorous and clearly besotted with each other. After they began posting movies of their romance on-line, individuals needed to see extra. In a span of six months, Warren gained greater than one million followers on YouTube.

Mixed with the prank movies he’d filmed along with his buddies, he constructed a sufficiently big viewers to start out incomes cash.

“Once I received my first cheque for $2,000 in a month, I used to be like, ‘Holy cow, that is gonna change my life’,” he recollects.

A few of that cash went into the creation of the Hype Home in 2019. Warren got here up with the identify, and moved into the property with Annon and a bunch of younger web stars like Addison Rae, Charlie D’Amelio, Chase Hudson and Thomas Petrou.

The collective launched themselves in December 2019 with a photoshoot that mimicked Backstreet Boys video for I Need It That Manner.

By the tip of the day, the hashtag #hypehouse was trending, and the mansion rapidly turned an incubator for viral movies.

The enterprise thrived throughout lockdown however, as particular person members signed TV offers, or grew bored with the escalating calls for for content material, it began to disintegrate. Warren and Annon left in 2022, citing a need to “transfer on to the subsequent chapter of their lives”.

Since then, rumours have swirled about behind-the-scenes drama on the home, with some members hinting at exploitation and mistreatment.

“There was falling out,” Warren instructed the Zach Sang present in 2023. “However a number of us signed NDAs, so no-one’s going to speak about it.”

He did, nevertheless, pour his frustrations into music.

“How do you sleep at night time?” he sings on the angst-ridden Burning Down, a track allegedly focused at one of many Hype Home’s co-founders.

“It scars eternally when somebody you referred to as your pal / Exhibits you the reality may be so chilly.”

Warren says he by no means made cash from the Hype Home. What it did give him, nevertheless, was a built-in viewers for his music.

“I feel that is actually uncommon,” he says. “Normally, when somebody goes from social media to music, they lose that fan base.

“However I feel lots of people watched my YouTube movies as a result of they have been having a tough life and wanted an escape. So after I began making music about my tough life, I feel they recognized with it much more.”

Warren dreamt of a music profession lengthy earlier than he entered the Hype Home. Again when TikTok was referred to as Music.ally, he’d even created a burner account to share his songs.

“I did not need to publish on my most important account, as a result of I used to be afraid of failing,” he explains.

“As a child, individuals bullied me for singing and doing expertise reveals and dedicating songs to my fifth grade girlfriend, you recognize?

“So I posted on a random account I created, and I filmed myself singing on the bathroom as a result of I needed to indicate I wasn’t taking it critically.

“And the subsequent day, I wakened and had 10 million views.”

His first launch was 2021’s One Extra I Love You, a track he began when he was 13 years previous and coming to phrases along with his father’s dying.

“I watched my sister go to a daddy-daughter dance with out her dad, and that is after I realised, ‘Oh, wait, my life is completely different’,” he recollects.

“I began mourning for the primary time, and I did not know the best way to course of it, so I simply went to the piano and performed some chords. And that is type of the place I began studying the best way to write.”

Warren’s outpouring of grief is highly effective in its simplicity, but it surely has touched individuals in methods he could not have anticipated.

“The opposite day, a girl needed me to signal a Heinz Beans t-shirt,” he says. “I giggled as a result of I assumed that was humorous, then she turned it over, and it was the identical t-shirt her son wore proper earlier than he died from most cancers.

“One Extra I Love You was the track that she performed at that funeral and the track she listened to assist her recover from it.”

“I feel that is probably the most highly effective factor on the planet.”

The musician, who was raised a Catholic, believes that therapeutic moments like these are a part of God’s plan for him.

“With out all of the loss, all of the trauma, all of the issues in my life, I would not have these songs. I would not have the means to assist the 5,000 individuals coming to the present tonight, I would not have the ability to present for my future household with my spouse.

“And I feel these are all issues that are supposed to occur, or can occur if I make the proper decisions.

“You realize, I may have chosen to get into medicine and be a foul individual however I selected this path.

“It is the craziest factor.”