Alex Warren’s ‘Ordinary’ Is Technically the Song of the Summer on the Charts

Where is this year’s song of the summer?

It’s the question that’s haunted road trippers and pool partiers for months now. But like so many low-stakes mysteries, the answer has been hiding in plain sight (or, in this case, earshot) all along.

If we’re going with cold, hard facts — Billboard chart data — there’s one song that’s dominated the airwaves as the weather has warmed. It’s just that a soaring love ballad a 24-year-old TikToker wrote about his wife is not exactly the ideal soundtrack for your day at the beach.

Released in February, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” took a few months to take off, becoming a bona fide commercial juggernaut by June, when it ascended to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s remained atop the all-genre chart for nine weeks so far, and continues to dominate Billboard’s Songs of the Summer chart, where it hasn’t budged from its No. 1 position since Memorial Day.

Though it makes every attempt to sound momentous, “Ordinary” is a love song that’s true to its name. Dedicated to Warren’s wife, Kouvr Annon, the song uses vaguely spiritual lyrics to describe their connection. His vocals backed by hymnal echoes and a pounding drum line, Warren insists “the angels up in the clouds are jealous” of his marital bliss and compares his wife to a sanctuary, a vineyard, and a sculptor. If the song’s theme of divine love wasn’t clear enough, the couple also costars in the music video, and Warren later released a “wedding version” of the song paired with footage from their real-life nuptials.

That the song is generically gooey has worked to its advantage in the airplay department. “Ordinary” owes much of its longevity to companies like iHeartMedia, America’s biggest radio network, which allocates tens of thousands of spins to the song each week. In its most recent week atop the Hot 100, “Ordinary” tallied over 73 million radio airplay audience impressions, according to Billboard, compared to only 12.4 million streams and 6,000 copies sold.

The song’s lack of specificity also makes it a broadly appealing soundtrack for lovey-dovey moments on TikTok, where both versions of “Ordinary” have been used in millions of videos with billions of cumulative views. Annon’s own uses of the song, usually featuring sweet moments with Warren, frequently collect over 1 million likes.

Call it the home court advantage: As a former YouTuber who joined Hype House, a flashy collective for big-name TikTokers, in 2020, Warren learned and then perfected the art of getting engagement. He and Annon briefly lived in the Los Angeles mansion together, constantly creating content, orchestrating David Dobrik-style pranks, and sharing glimpses of their lives together; Warren described the experience as “college, but for social media.”

“It helped me learn how to create content that resonates with an audience and can captivate people,” he told Variety.

Warren’s self-conscious positioning as America’s top new “wife guy” offers the media a tidy narrative to push while reporting on the song’s success — and helps cement “Ordinary” as a favorite song choice for romantic montages and relationship content across the internet.

But the differential between the song’s commercial utility and its artistic value has perplexed critics and fans alike.

“Genuinely WHO is listening to this,” reads a recent tweet with over 27,000 likes. Even r/popheads, a Reddit community for recreational pop scholars whose self-appointed mission is to take the merits of the genre seriously, is full of cold contempt for the song’s dominance.

“I don’t think you can deeply hate the song by itself,” one commenter wrote, “because it’s so fucking boring.”

Rolling Stone’s Larisha Paul coined the phrase “‘The Voice’ Audition Core” to characterize the musical formula that “Ordinary” follows: ideal for soundtracking a throwaway emotional moment on reality TV, but devoid of any real personality. Indeed, Warren performed the song on the “Love Is Blind” season eight reunion special, slotting easily into a generic vision of happily ever after literally accompanied by a montage of couples.

Still, there’s no denying that “Ordinary” is the summer’s defining hit. Remaining atop the Hot 100 for over two months is no small feat, and even as late-season challengers have emerged — most recently in the form of a fictional K-pop group from a Netflix film — there isn’t enough time before the autumnal equinox for another song to challenge Warren’s reign.

It’s just a shame that many excellent summertime jams actually have been released this year, they just lacked the radio push or market power to challenge “Ordinary” at the top of the charts.

Addison Rae is Warren’s fellow former TikToker-turned-singer, but the similarities end there; her cool-girl collaborators and creative curiosity resulted in a debut album, “Addison,” that toes the line between nostalgic and eccentric. (The appropriately named “Summer Forever” is a standout.) Lorde’s latest album, “Virgin,” includes gems like “Shapeshifter” and “Favorite Daughter,” which wrap arresting lyrics in melodic, highly accessible packages, the ghost of last year’s “Brat summer” hovering on the margins.

Care for something a little less personal, a little more irreverent? Tinashe and Disco Lines have you covered with the freshly remixed “No Broke Boys.” And forget song of the summer, Haim’s “Relationships” may be the song of the year. Danielle Haim and her sisters manage to spin the agony of indecision into flippant, funky magic.

As the season winds down, a new Taylor Swift album draws closer, and the charts begin to change shape, may “Ordinary” serve as a reminder that summer trends may disappoint or underwhelm — but they never last forever.