The #3 single in America, slowly climbing out of the looming shadows of “Die With A Smile” and the still-charting “Pink Pony Membership,” is a pop-rock tune known as “Bizarre.” The observe sounds immediately acquainted: a towering edifice of sound with multitracked, devotional-coded vocals in a perpetual rousing refrain, lyrics that equate the wife-guy way of life to breathless non secular give up, and a voice that initiatives extra gravitas than the fratty-looking zoomer that’s intoning it. It pointedly aspires to {couples} dances and wedding ceremony tributes — there’s a separate “Marriage ceremony Model,” for the besotted amongst you.
However the artist, Alex Warren, perhaps isn’t so acquainted. Perhaps you’ve heard him on the radio alongside his friends Benson Boone or Teddy Swims. Maybe you caught his Jimmy Fallon showcase just lately. Or maybe you heard him jamming with Ed Sheeran and Shaboozey at a Coachella satellite tv for pc occasion. You’ve actually heard folks like him. However who, precisely, is he? To reply that query, sadly, we’ve to speak concerning the Hype Home.
The Hype Home was a Los Angeles collective of TikTok influencers and their orbiters that was energetic all through the primary half of the 2020s. Warren was one of many authentic members — he’s the one who got here up with the title. He shared the home with now-wife Kouvr Annon; founder and YouTuber Thomas Petrou; a pre-“Food plan Pepsi” Addison Rae; TikTok megastar Charli D’Amelio and her sister Dixie; and dozens of different TikTok stars and aspirants, 42 in all. The Hype Home wasn’t the primary so-called “content material home” — one listing on-line counts a number of dozen, together with the Vibe Crew, the Collab Crew, and the precisely named Home No person Requested For — nor was it essentially the most infamous. But it surely’s in all probability the home with the largest declare on the musical charts.
The Hype Home was a literal home — a 16,000-square foot mansion in Hollywood Hills with 10 bedrooms, a lavish yard and pool, plentiful mirrors, souped-up sound, and different influencer-friendly facilities. It was a short-run, abysmally reviewed Netflix actuality present, wherein Warren was closely featured. But it surely was additionally a job. The home and its inhabitants have been the topic of a 2020 New York Instances profile stuffed with disconcerting quotes and bleak dispatches from the intersection of hustler grindset and viral fame. “You may’t come and stick with us for every week and never make any movies, it’s not going to work,” Petrie mentioned. “This complete home is designed for productiveness. If you wish to occasion, there’s a whole bunch of homes that throw events in LA each weekend. We don’t wish to be that. It’s not in step with anybody on this home’s model.”
It is not going to shock you to listen to that events occurred, nor that the home’s model was rapidly tarnished by inter-influencer drama. A full accounting of the fallout is out of scope of this music column — for the morbidly curious, a partial but intensive timeline might be discovered right here — not least as a result of Warren managed to flee a lot of the filth.
He additionally escaped the home, asserting his departure in 2022 through a completely unconvincing video about his supposed lack of onerous emotions. Equally unsurprisingly, his cordiality was enforced by a battalion of NDAs and different restrictive contracts — particulars of which subsequently leaked. As soon as the hype disappeared from the Hype Home, folks began to speak; Warren did so on an episode of podcast Viall Information titled “Actuality Roundup, Sp*rm Donor Profiles, [and] VPR Drama.” (You aren’t anticipated to grasp this.) He gave a barely realer story, mentioned he and Petrou have been not on talking phrases, after which pivoted to what he actually needed to speak about: his music.
Actuality TV stars, YouTubers, and different minor celebrities have all the time had self-importance music initiatives. (A few of them are even good!) However even their most clout-chasing, gossip-baiting songs nonetheless tried to be precise songs. The songs produced and impressed by content material homes, regardless of their self-stylings as incubators of future expertise, are normally much less songs than drama with a beat. The ur-text of this style, and doubtless the one one you’ve heard of except you frequent influencer snark subreddits, is “It’s On a regular basis Bro” by Jake Paul. Paul, a YouTuber who later turned a Trump-promoting boxer, obtained his bros from predecessor content material home Staff 10 to hitch him in an ordeal of disses, posturing, and beginner rap, The observe is concurrently low-effort but sweaty with effort; it wears its awfulness as a sort of braggadocio. As a result of these sorts of songs have a tendency to return in clusters, “It’s On a regular basis Bro” spawned a number of response tracks, most notably “Its EveryNight Sis,” by Violet and rival YouTuber RiceGum. (It’s higher, however nonetheless terrible.) The Hype Home’s authentic contribution to the style was secondhand: “Nonetheless Softish” by home orbiter Josh Richards, a car to accuse numerous (non-Warren) members of the collective of dishonest. (As soon as once more, it’s terrible.)
After signing a take care of Atlantic Information in 2022, Warren entered the fracas with a tune known as “Burning Down,” posted a preview of the observe to TikTok with the caption “Wrote this about that content material home…” This wasn’t Warren’s first tune — he’d been posting music on-line on a semi-anonymous burner, and by the point he launched the acoustic ballad “One Extra I Love You” in 2021, his music was already properly polished. “Burning Down” has a cheery melody, jaunty piano line, and smug self-confidence, evocative of numerous inescapable radio hits. They serve a objective: “Used to inform me you’d pray for me — you have been praying for my downfall,” Warren sings, weaponizing the tune’s personal smarm towards his foes.
In fact, regardless of being explicitly and deliberately a content-house diss observe, “Burning Down” is totally different from the aforementioned slop: It’s making an attempt to be a tune. It had endurance — sufficient that Warren included it on his 2024 album You’ll Be Alright, Child (Chapter 1), then juiced its lifespan additional with a Joe Jonas remix. By comparability, “It’s On a regular basis Bro” peaked at #91 on the Billboard Scorching 100. And it wasn’t even Paul’s highest-charting tune – the equally terrible “Jerika,” a duet together with his fake spouse, peaked at #86. But the one countdowns you’ll discover it on now are YouTube slop compilations titled issues like “WORST SONGS EVER?!?!” “It’s On a regular basis Bro” could have, because the New York Instances argued, instructed us the place music was getting in 2018; however it actually didn’t inform us the place music was promoting.
“Burning Down” then took on a lifetime of its personal. Whereas the only peaked at a middling #69, it served its objective: serving to Warren escape drama confinement. Protecting his lyrics obscure not solely helped fend off potential contract attorneys, however it gave Warren’s writing an enchantment past the TikTok devoted. The primary remark below the TikTok is consultant: “I do know this was written for hype home however rattling does this hit rising up in a poisonous household atmosphere.” So “Bizarre” doesn’t stray removed from the sound or the sincerity of “Burning Down.” Nor does the remainder of You’ll Be Alright, Child (Chapter 1). The album is unchangingly competent: a barrage of Mumford & Sons-style strums and OneRepublic-style pop-rock behemoths, all aimed instantly on the charts. The folks affect is much less busker than American Idol guitar man, or presumably megachurch worship tune — Warren grew up Catholic and claims worship music as an affect. And its vibe is the other of TikTok clout-chasing — nearly explicitly so.
It’s comprehensible that Warren would wish to distance himself from the Hype Home; he appears to now hate the entire expertise, and it’s the least fascinating factor about him. He had a troubled, abusive upbringing; his father died of most cancers when he was 9 years previous, and his mom kicked him out of the home when he was 18. A good friend’s father or mother by accident shot him when he was 18, and he nonetheless has the bullet in his lung. Pre-vlogging, his hobbies included taking aside and jailbreaking computer systems. But the all-content way of life looms nonetheless. When The Guardian identified that the wedding-centric promotion of “Bizarre” wasn’t that far faraway from his previous private movies, the interviewer famous: “Our dialog has develop into tense, and a publicist informs me our time is almost up.” And on the Viall Information podcast, Warren tries onerous to distance himself from influencer dilettantes, however one senses his personal anxieties coming by means of: “I’ve X quantity of tens of millions of followers, I’m simply going to do that swap. And so they watch my TikToks — why received’t they take heed to my music?”
Warren’s answer to this: develop into a Hype Home of himself, continuously grinding. He’s repeatedly insisted that he pursued music “the suitable means”: taking music classes, finding out music idea, studying the way to produce. He obsesses over algorithms — his personal phrases — speaks in assured business insider-y soundbytes, and comports himself like a person decided to optimize his profession. The folks he’s named as influences — Benson Boone, Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi, Benny Blanco, Jack Antonoff — sound like a networking rolodex. He made the scene ultimately weekend’s Stagecoach festivities, hobnobbing Lana Del Rey, Jelly Roll, mgk, and Shaboozey amongst others. Warren’s not a fan of Taylor Swift (though he and his fiancee selected “Lover” as their wedding ceremony tune). However he’s evidently making an attempt to place himself as her singer-songwriter peer; he’s even launched a separate model of “Burning Down” known as “Alex’s Model.”
And all this appears to have received folks over. In contrast to Addison Rae, with whom Warren shared a mainly an identical background (to not point out a literal home), Warren has gotten comparatively few accusations of being an business plant. He has haters, however they’re largely holdovers from his TikTok influencer days, upset about issues like his supposed copying of YouTuber David Dobrik or his spouse posting goofy stuff. (TikTok drama is a petty world.) And even these haters periodically, grudgingly, admit that they like Warren’s music.
Look, enjoying authenticity video games with these items is pointless. TikTok, for all its faults, is a medium the place suburban children can compete with nepo infants. Jake Paul obtained Gucci Mane on his single by allegedly personally paying him a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} and funded all of it with enterprise capital; Alex Warren obtained Joe Jonas on his single by being on Atlantic Information and obtained his album out with old-school A&R. Addison Rae works with Max Martin proteges. Warren works with people who find themselves much less well-known — producer Adam Yaron, songwriter Mags Duval, guitarist Cal Shapiro — however who ship precisely what the business needs. His profession observe has undoubtedly been publicity-greased, but when the business might reliably plant artists, it’d certainly have carried out that for the one-time most-followed individual on TikTok, Charli D’Amelio. (Her debut single, “in case you ask me to,” is quite a bit like Olivia Rodrigo’s breakout hit “drivers license”; you probably have by no means heard it.)
Whereas Warren’s writing about legitimately weak material, he obtained that concept from a Logan Paul podcast. To his rising fan base, that origin story doesn’t matter as a result of You’ll Be Alright, Child (Chapter 1) and albums prefer it sound actual. On the charts, there’s nearly nothing that may’t be forgiven by huge stomping anthems.
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