What Is "Ordinary" by Alex Warren About?

What is "Ordinary" by Alex Warren about?

"Ordinary" is a deeply personal love song about Warren's wife. Warren's breakout chamber pop hit "Ordinary" is about the experience of finding your soulmate and doing anything to be together, employing Catholic imagery to describe the feeling of being in love. In an interview with MTV from August 2925, Warren explains that the ballad was inspired by meeting and falling in love with his wife, Kouvr Annon: "The song is about screaming [about] your love [for] someone" and "screaming about how, you know, 'we found something that other people couldn't.'" The story behind the song: Warren and Annon first met on Snapchat in 2018, when Warren was living out of his car in Carlsbad, California. Warren's abusive alcoholic mother had kicked him out of the house when he turned eighteen; his father had died when Alex was nine. Annon left her family home in Hawaii to live with him, and the two gained some fame as influencers before eventually becoming internet sensations as members of the viral content creation group Hype House, which also included Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae.

"Ordinary" Lyrical Analysis

The lyrics contrast Warren's relationship with mundane everyday life. The song's title and lyrics speak to how perfect and, truly, heavenly Warren's and Annon's marriage is. It opens with the lyrics, "They say, 'The holy water's watered down / And this town's lost its faith. / Our colors will fade eventually.' / So, if our time is runnin' out / Day after day, / We'll make the mundane our masterpiece." These lyrics not only speak to the brilliance of Warren's marriage, they remind us to seize the day: life is fleeting, so make the most of what you have. These themes are echoed in the chorus: "You're takin' me out of the ordinary. / I want you layin' me down 'til we're dead and buried."

The song uses religious imagery to describe Warren's love for his wife. The chorus continues with the lyrics, "On the edge of your knife, stayin' drunk on your vine. / The angels up in the clouds are jealous knowin' we found / Somethin' so out of the ordinary. / You got me kissin' thе ground of your sanctuary. / Shatter me with your touch, oh, Lord, return mе to dust." "Stayin' drunk on your vine" is a reference to John 15:5, in which Christ says to his disciples, "I am the vine; you are the branches." Being "drunk" may also be a reference to the Catholic tradition of drinking wine during communion. In the next verse, he goes on to compare his wife to God himself, capable of controlling Warren like a devotee: "Oh, my life, how do ya / Breathe and take my breath away? / At your altar, I will pray. / You're the sculptor, I'm the clay." In the third verse, he compares his relationship to heaven on earth: "Somethin' so heavenly, higher than ecstasy. / Whenever you're next to me, oh, my, my / World was in black and white until I saw your light. / I thought you had to die to find / Somethin' so out of the ordinary."

"Ordinary" Music Video

The music video for "Ordinary" was released alongside the single. Not only is "Ordinary" a dreamy love song about Warren's wife, Kouvr Annon, but the music video stars the two real-life lovebirds. It features Warren meeting Annon in a laundromat, then chasing her through different places including a forest, a beach, and a desert before finally catching up to her. At the end of the video, both of them levitate to the sky, as if ascending to heaven.

Is "Ordinary" a Christian song?

No, "Ordinary" is not a Christian song, but it uses Catholic imagery. Because of lyrics like "Shatter me with your touch / Oh Lord, return me to dust," some listeners have interpreted the song to be about God, but Warren is really just using Christian imagery to describe his heavenly love for his wife. It makes sense—Alex Warren grew up in the church and still identifies as Catholic. It's understandable that people would think the song is about God at first listen: Warren has written other songs that reference his faith, like "The Outside," which also appears on You'll Be Alright, Kid and which Warren describes in an LA Times interview as being "about the things that people go through to turn to God or another power or something to get out of their own heads. I wanted to depict people finding a sense of purpose."

The song is also inspired by Christian worship music. Alex Warren grew up Christian and his musical taste was largely shaped by contemporary Christian worship music, so he and the band always try to make their songs "anthemic" in the way many worship songs tend to be: "I'm obsessed with worship music," he says. "I grew up a lot with that. And so to be able to kind of take some things from that and be able to write this record, it really felt, to me, special." So you might hear some similarities between his song—with its sweeping choir and anthemic feel—and songs your local church band might sing.

Is "Ordinary" blasphemous?

According to some listeners, "Ordinary" may be blasphemous. Though Alex Warren identifies as Catholic, some Christian listeners have interpreted the song as spiritually offensive and against the 10 Commandments. The song's lyrics essentially compare the singer's lover to God and describe their relationship as better than heaven itself, and the music video features the two spouses literally ascending to heaven. For instance, the lyric "The angels up in the clouds are jealous knowin' we found / Somethin' so out of the ordinary" may be viewed as blasphemous, since it suggests that there is something "better" than heaven. The lyric "At your altar, I will pray. / You're the sculptor, I'm the clay" explicitly compares the singer's lover to God, which may be viewed as blasphemous and idolatrous.

Other listeners view the song as reverent of the sacrament of marriage. For some Christian listeners, "Ordinary" is a song about how holy marriage is. The spiritual language that elevates his relationship to something heavenly isn't blasphemous (especially coming from a Christian songwriter like Warren), but instead serves to remind listeners that matrimony is a divine sacrament. In other words, by praising marriage, he is praising God. As Warren himself describes it in an interview with the LA Times: "I’m worshiping my wife in a way…. Everyone’s already done 'You’re my world,' you know? I wanted to do something different—almost Hozier-esque. I wrote into it being like, 'I really love my wife, and I have a relationship with God—that's something I can compare it to.'" "I've heard a lot of Christians' opinions on it," he adds, "and some people are like, 'F— this guy.' There's also so many people who think it's a super die-hard Christian song and don't like it either. I have to be OK with both sides hating me."

"Ordinary" by Alex Warren Release Information

"Ordinary" is the lead single from Warren's album You'll Be Alright, Kid. The song was written by Warren, along with Adam Yaron, Cal Shapiro, and Mags Duval. "Ordinary" and its music video were both released on February 7, 2025, through Atlantic Records. The chamber pop love song was an immediate commercial success, topping the Billboard Global 200 for 10 weeks in a row and reaching number one in more than 30 countries. It also peaked in the USA on the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks.

Fun Facts about "Ordinary" by Alex Warren

Alex Warren hated the song at first. "It just didn't sound like a song I would write, I guess? I was so used to writing sad songs about the things that I'd gone through and the people that I've lost, and this was a song that didn't sound really sad, and it was about love and about meeting my wife." But when he and his band finally finished writing it and he sang it for the first time, they knew it would be a hit. "I think it's perfect," he says. "The way everything came together, it's perfect."

The lyric isn't supposed to be "All my life, I'll do ya"—but now Warren sings it that way. Warren explains, "I say, 'Oh my life, how do ya,' [and] it'll fade into the next [lines]" (which are "breathe and take my breath away"). "Everyone, including my wife, when they first heard the song, thought it was 'All my life, I'll do ya,' in a sexual way…and I thought it was hilarious…so now I just sing it that way."

WWE RAW used the song to commemorate the life of the late Hulk Hogan. On the July 28, 2025 edition ofWWE RAW, "Ordinary" was featured as part of a video memorial to honor the life of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, who passed away on July 24, 2025.

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