America's New Favorite Song Is by Its New No. 1 Wife Guy
There's a new No. 1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 this week. But for chart followers like me, there's some bigger news further down the chart. And that other song provides some useful context for our new No. 1.
The newsmaking hit song is in the bottom half of the Top 10, where last week it set an all-time longevity milestone. It's the record for most weeks on the Hot 100, total, and it's actually been reset three times this decade, each time by a moody male-vocalized ditty. Back in 2021, the Weeknd's COVID bop “ Blinding Lights ” set the mark when it spent 90 weeks on the Hot 100 (beating the 2010s' 87-week record holder , “Radioactive,” by Imagine Dragons). Then, in 2022, Glass Animals' pensive and even more COVID-flavored “ Heat Waves ” edged out the Weeknd when it racked up 91 weeks. And now, in 2025, the latest all-time title holder is “ Lose Control ,” by Teddy Swims, who spent his record-setting 92nd week on the Hot 100 at the end of May . This week, “Lose Control” adds a 93 rd week, and given that it's still lodged in the Top 10 (currently No. 8), you can bet 100 weeks isn't out of the question. We may be living with this song forever.
Now, you may be thinking: Do I even know this song? “Lose Control”? Who the hell is Teddy Swims? Trust me, in the past year, if you've set foot outside your house—especially into a supermarket or drugstore—you know “Lose Control.” It's a slow-burning soul-pop belter with gospel and rock overtones, sung by a burly, bearded white dude with face tattoos who looks like if Jelly Roll and Post Malone had a baby . “Lose Control” is Swims' only big hit—nothing else he's released has cracked the Top 20—but that one hit was a monster. “Lose” spent one solitary week on top of the Hot 100 , way back in March 2024, but because it never left the Top 10 all year, it wound up Billboard's No. 1 song for all of 2024 . As I've chronicled in this No. 1 hits series and on my podcast Hit Parade , slow-burning sleeper hits tend to overperform in the year-end chart tally. And “Lose Control,” with its loping tempo and gravelly pseudo-soul vocals, is the slowest burner ever; it's practically freezing. Not unlike Jelly Roll, the singer most resembles him physically, Swims' whole thing is vocalizing like he really means it, man .
Swims is also the avatar of a micro-genre that has been quietly dominating the hit parade, led by a whole brigade of dudes who really mean it, man . It's a kind of Jelly Roll–ification of the charts—songs by earnest, rock-and-soul bros who score one outsized hit: Swims' “Lose Control,” Benson Boone's “ Beautiful Things ,” Myles Smith's “ Stargazing .” These hits have been outperforming the Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX fare that's been drawing all the media coverage and Grammy Awards.
Which brings us back to our newest No. 1 song, by another bearded bro who wears his heart on his sleeve tattoo, offering his own, meeker take on the genre. And Alex Warren's smash, perhaps appropriately, is called “Ordinary.” Don't be surprised if this swooner pulls a Swims and winds up the biggest hit of 2025.
To be fair, the song's chorus goes, “You're takin' me out of the ordinary.” The title may be meant to be ironic. But Alex Warren doesn't strike me as a guy who does irony. From the religious imagery of its lyrics to its twinkly guitar to its goopy video co-starring his real-life wife, “Ordinary” is almost painfully sincere. It's giving Ed Sheeran crossed with Lewis Capaldi . Given those UK analogies, maybe the most surprising thing I learned about Alex Warren in recent months, as “Ordinary” was climbing the charts, is that he isn't from the British Isles. (Although the song is a UK megasmash— 11 weeks at No. 1 and counting—because of course it is. The Brits love middlebrow balladry even more than we do.) Warren is from no place more exotic than Carlsbad, California. Actually, the glossiest thing about him is how he rose to fame: as a YouTuber and TikTok influencer who lived in, and even helped launch, a collab house.
If you have to ask what a collab house is—it's a crash pad–slash–incubator for social-media influencers and content creators—then our latest wave of zoomer pop stars might seem bewildering. Warren was one of the founding members of the Hype House , a Los Angeles content-creator collective that launched in the late '10s and served as a way station for a remarkable number of TikTok-generation boldface names, including Addison Rae , Chase “ Huddy ” Hudson, and both Charli and Dixie D'Amelio . Warren was among the goofier Hype House members, but he did—legend has it—give the home its name. Prior to that, Warren's early claim to fame was skateboard and prank videos, first on YouTube and Instagram and eventually TikTok . (He was on YouTube as early as age 10; he's now 24.) Then, in 2022, a couple of years into the Hype House's existence, the dwelling became the titular subject of a Netflix reality TV show , in which Warren staged ever-more-convoluted pranks to keep his massive video audience fed. The most elaborate involved staging a mock wedding to his then girlfriend, fellow Hype House member Kouvr Annon.
Say this for Alex Warren: He is savvy about the way entertainment careers work now. He was inspired by YouTube-born child stars a bit older than him, like Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes . But there was a catch: He wasn't as musically talented as them. In his self-produced docuseries I Hope You're Proud , he reveals that as a kid his voice was squeaky, off-key, and rejected by talent shows. So he started doing goofy nonmusical videos to build name recognition before even trying to get signed for his tunes. “I thought if I could get the social media thing big, then people would care about the music,” he tells the camera. “And I thought it worked.”
You can say that again. Starting with an independently released 2021 single, “ One More I Love You ,” Warren attracted the attention of major labels, who wanted his social media following as avidly as his burbling, sentimental pop, which combined acoustic strumming with electronic blipping. After a bit of a bidding war, Warren signed to Atlantic Records in 2022 and began issuing anthemic singles like “ Headlights .” It took two years for him to crack the Hot 100, which he did with the 2024 Joe Jonas duet “ Burning Down .” He got only as high as No. 69 with that track, a spiteful love-gone-wrong lament with a jaunty beat, but the formula was working: Even when Warren is writing from a place of hurt, his demeanor is openhearted and scrappy. The stage was set for the more dewy-eyed “Ordinary,” which caught the Teddy Swims–led, earnest-bro trendlet as it was catching fire.
“Ordinary” is a perfectly cromulent slurry of devotional pop. Warren's chiming guitar almost sounds like a harp, which gives it a churchy, celestial mood. It's thick with over-the-top vows-ready lyrics like “I want you layin' me down till we're dead and buried” and “You got me kissin' the ground of your sanctuary.” While I'm sure Warren would have loved the song to reach No. 1 a while ago—it got stuck behind Kendrick Lamar and SZA's monster smash “ Luther ” for almost a month—it actually makes sense that it reached the top spot just in time for wedding season. In fact, not only did Warren cast his own spouse in the glossy official music video, but she also returns in a second video Warren dropped a month ago, cut together from footage from their actual, camera-ready wedding. This dude's whole life is built for a celebrity narrative.
Apparently, the summer of 2025 is going to be a good one on the charts for celebrity, specifically musicians who broke their careers via some other medium besides music. Last week, Tate McRae —the 21-year-old Canadian dancer turned singer who got her start nearly a decade ago as a nimble teen finalist on TV's So You Think You Can Dance —rode the coattails of a duet with country superstar Morgan Wallen, “ What I Want ,” to her first No. 1. To me, what's most remarkable about the one-two punch of “What I Want” and now “Ordinary” is how similar they sound—not melodically but in terms of vibe. Both are sparkly, midtempo ballads that are somewhere between diaphanous and paper-thin. The Wallen–McRae duet is only barely country, mostly in his vocal twang; it's defined more by its chiming pop guitars and pitter-patting trap beats. Similarly, “Ordinary” sets a tone with plucked guitars and a thumping electronic drum meant to resemble a lub-dubbing heart. If you'd told me they were recorded during the same studio session, I'd believe you, even though they came from two different ecosystems: the Nashville studio system and the Atlantic Records machine. I guess in the mid-'20s, most hitbound music reverts to the mean, which is generic, romantic adult contemporary.
Between these two chart-dueling hits, as we move into the warmer months and the accompanying battle for the Song of the Summer , my bet is that “Ordinary” proves longer lasting, not just because of wedding season but because 2025 was waiting for its earnest-bro blockbuster. To be sure, this year has been big for male-female duets: Since the start of the year, Lamar and SZA's “Luther” and Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga's “ Die With a Smile ” have collectively been No. 1 for 18 of the year's 22 weeks so far. In theory, that should work in favor of the Wallen–McRae duet. But Alex Warren's Hallmark card of a hit is also riding a trend—there's a reason that Teddy Swims and Benson Boone are still in the Top 10, despite the fact that both their singles are ancient—and even if “Ordinary” isn't a duet, its moony worship of Warren's spouse makes it effectively a dialogue with an imagined second vocalist.
“Ordinary” has also got momentum on its side, in all of the Hot 100 components. Billboard reports that it has been streamed more than 20 million times a week ; it spent four weeks as the most streamed song at Spotify and other digital service providers and is holding in the streaming top five even amid the onslaught that's come with Wallen's 37-track new album . In downloads, “Ordinary” has been the top seller since late April and is still No. 1 in digital sales this week . And on the radio, the song has been on a meteoric upward trajectory, just reaching the top five in airplay audience ; a month ago, it wasn't even in the top 30. That radio momentum in particular will serve “Ordinary” well for the rest of the summer. Ambient omnipresence is how Songs of Summer are made. (I just started hearing Warren's warble in my local supermarket last week.)
Indeed, Alex Warren is having a good week on the charts all around. The same week his breakthrough hit rises to No. 1, he instantly scores his second Top 40 hit, “Bloodline,” which debuts at No. 32. And … how on brand is this? It's a duet with Jelly Roll. Thanks to the presence of Mr. Roll, “Bloodline” is twangier than Alex Warren's usual fare, and blessedly more up-tempo. But it's issued by Warren's label, not Jelly Roll's, and you can tell that Atlantic Records is going all in on Warren from the high-budget “Bloodline” video. A costume drama set in a medieval tavern, the clip is giving Ed Sheeran's cameo in Game of Thrones .
“Bloodline” reveals, perhaps inadvertently, what Alex Warren needs to go to the next level: some more interesting songs, sure, but also a persona, which Jelly Roll has in abundance. Certainly, Warren's decade-plus of social media history has drawn the attention of millions of Zoomers who are rooting for his success. But as the Hype House indicated, social stars come and go. To persist as a full-blown pop star, Warren will need some kind of meta-narrative that connects back to his music. If “Bloodline” cracks the Top 10 while “Ordinary” is still commanding the Hot 100, you'll know that Warren has arrived.
For now, “Ordinary” is Alex Warren's calling card, and it's basically a Goldilocks porridge of a hit: soothing if bland pablum for the first summer of Trump 2.0. Like the weddings it will be soundtracking, it comes with something old (romantic balladry), something new (zoomer social fodder), something borrowed (the sound of UK middlebrow), and something blue (those yearning lyrics). If nothing else, it establishes Alex Warren as 2025's current avatar of the Wife Guys, who've certainly been doing some business culturally this decade. But as we've also learned, the Wife Guy thing tends to come back and bite you . Warren might want to broaden his persona to be a more all-purpose really means it, man man—an earnest bro for all seasons.
