You would’ve never heard the song, “Ordinary,” if its composer didn’t believe in it.
Songwriter Alex Warren admits the song was an accident. He said,
“We didn’t write it to be a hit, we didn’t mean to write it to be anything more than just a love song.”
But it found a huge audience despite the fact that Warren’s record label didn’t like it. They said “it’s not a hit, no one is going to listen to a ballad.”
And let’s face it, love songs are out of vogue.
And yet Warren persisted in pushing it:
“This song is going to change my life. Believe in it.”
He personally promoted “Ordinary” on Tik Tok and his personal social media platforms until it began to get fans, who in turn promoted it to their friends until it went viral and became a monster hit. Warren said no one promoted it at his record label. Its success is a result of his perseverance on social media.
Perseverance
Mr. Warren’s life is a story of perseverance. His father died of cancer when Alex was only nine years old. His mother was an alcoholic who kicked him out of the house when he was in high school. The homeless young man was forced to live in friends’ cars.
Despite a rocky start in life, he built a substantial social media following to which he promoted his music. Even more, he found a wife who left Hawaii to live with him … in a car, no less … in Escondido, California. They married in 2022.
So why in the world is “Ordinary” anything but ordinary? Because it’s a well-written love song with spiritual overtones. In other words, it offers depth not found in much modern music.
Three out of four streams are songs released at least five years ago. Only five percent of streaming songs are from the top two-hundred new tracks. Music lovers simply like older songs better than new ones.
Contemporary songs are increasingly boxed in by ‘algorithms’ that keep pulling up songs that sound like other ones we’ve listened to. So record labels aren’t interested in anything too different. They pressure songwriters to stick to formulas that ‘sell,’ thus their lack of interest in “Ordinary.”
Songs today tend to be written from the ‘bottom-up’ instead of ‘top-down.’ The best American songwriter a hundred years ago was Irving Berlin who pecked out an interesting melody on his piano first, and then developed the harmonic underpinnings and lyrics second, in other words, working from the top down.
Today, the underpinnings often come first, where music producers purchase pre-made beats online, and then plop a melody on top of it. Pre-made beats crop up in song after song, creating a sense of sameness.
Songwriters write fewer love songs
And sadly for those of us in the wedding industry, the number of love songs being written began to drop like a rock in 1995. Although there are still some good ones being written, there are just fewer from which to choose, which is why so many couples getting married ask us to play older songs at their wedding celebrations.
‘Ordinary’ offers up a love song with more heft than most, with lines like this sung with choir voices:
“The angels up in the clouds are jealous knowin’ we found
Somethin’ so out of the ordinary.
You got me kissing’ the ground of your sanctuary,
Shatter me with your touch, oh, Lord, return me to dust.”
The song looks at love and marriage as a lifelong commitment, which is rather refreshing in a culture in which many couples disparage marriage because of a fear of a lifelong commitment.
The song’s success should be a wake-up call for record labels to think outside the box and be open to creative song writers like Alex Warren who write love songs that resonate with a broad audience. A quarter of a billion people have viewed his music video (above) in addition to 1.4 billion who listened to it on Spotify.
If you select Columbus Pro DJs to provide entertainment at your Columbus wedding celebration, we’ll play “Ordinary” on high end equipment that offers clear, controlled sound that perfectly showcases the great chorus section of the song. Check us out today.
