How Alex Warren Built His Touring Career With Wasserman’s Zac Bluestone & Marty Diamond

Now in its ninth consecutive week atop the Billboard Hot 100 in early August, “Ordinary” by Alex Warren is officially 2025’s Song of the Summer. Last weekend the 24-year-old closed out Lollapalooza’s first night duetting with Luke Combs (see below) on the megafest’s main stage. Which begs the question, who the F is Alex Warren?

It’s a legitimate question, especially if you’re over 30, TikTok ambivalent and find clicking the platform’s like button impossible despite the algorithm’s misguided attempts to lure you in. It is a bit surprising, though, how Warren’s co-agent, Wasserman’s Zac Bluestone, who oversees his touring along with veteran agent Marty Diamond and James Rubin,, discovered the social media powerhouse.

“I wish I had an amazing story of me finding him on TikTok, but one of my best close friends from college is an A&R at Atlantic Records,” says Wasserman’s Zac Bluestone, who at 33 is firmly a Millennial and a perfect Gen-Z interlocutor. “He called me one day saying, ‘I just signed this incredible artist, Alex Warren. I’m so excited about him. You got to check it out.’ It was one listen and I was sold. I was like, ‘Wow, this kid’s incredible.’ It was around the time that Atlantic Records came on is when we came on. I look after him with Marty Diamond as well. That was summer 2022.”

Some will say signing an influencer with millions upon millions of followers is a no-brainer. Warren, after all, is a charter member of TikTok’s famed Hype House, an L.A.-area mansion where he and a gaggle of young content creators and attention-seekers sought likes and subscribers. It’s also where Warren and his then-girlfriend, influencer Kouvr Annon, lived before they married last year, and for whom he wrote “Ordinary.” But the path from influencer fame to successful music career is littered with Internet-famous carcasses. The transience of social media with its rises and falls to and from fame based on algorithms and mob mentality is no guarantee for music biz success, even for the most influential influencer.

“I wasn’t aware of his (influencer status) when I first listened to his music,” Bluestone continues. “Clicking on his Instagram and TikTok, it became pretty clear that he had a following when things started. I think it’s a trap that people can fall into trying to sign people with large social followings. That’s not how I approach signing at all. It’s obviously helpful at certain times and for certain artists. But the music comes first. What attracted me to this project is incredible songwriting.”

“I found some success in social media, and thought that’s what I was meant to do,” Warren told The Hollywood Reporter about his music career’s inflection point. “I posted a singing video on one of my backup accounts thinking no one would see it, and I woke up the next day to 10 million views and everyone telling me I should do music. It was weird because I wasn’t used to people liking my music, I wasn’t used to people liking my voice. I was so used to getting bullied and hated for it. So I took a chance and put out a song and it ended up doing really well, and I saw my chance to do what I loved and here we are.”

“Here,” at this juncture is with more than 2 billion Spotify streams. “Ordinary,” a sweet ballad topped by Warren’s sonorous voice, is a heartfelt tribute to his wife with a power chorus redolent of Imagine Dragons. It’s now at 830 million Spotify streams, over 100 million YouTube streams along and reams of TikTok homages including by a children’s choir, an elderly priest and a Savannah Banana.

Other hits include “Carry You Home,” nearing 500 million Spotify streams and “Before You Leave Me” at 330 million. He’s also collaborated with Blackpink’s Rosé, Joe Jonas and Jelly Roll.

Beyond—or maybe despite—his influencer status, Warren and his music are exceedingly relatable. He lost his father when he was 9 to cancer and his mother passed when he was 21. He was homeless for a time. But as he processed these traumas before a growing social media fanbase, he seemed to find his authentic inner and outer voice.

“You gravitate to him as a human being,” Bluestone says. “He suffered immense loss in his life. And he has this really incredible relationship with his wife that is very open, transparent and authentic. And then he’s writing songs about these things and telling real stories through music. And he’s incredibly vulnerable in telling those stories through his music. That’s why it’s resonating, because it’s real.”

The eternal quest for the real and mental health is something we all strive for (good luck with that), but especially Gen-Z’ers who got the rawest of raw deals coming of age in an age of anxiety, a global pandemic, quarantines and social distancing (recommended by actual epidemiologists), extreme natural disasters (see last week’s West Coast tsunami warning), brutal wars, economic strife along with social and political upheavals. Thankfully artists like Noah Kahan, Jelly Roll, Twenty One Pilots (see Opening Salvo, page 5), Shawn Mendes, Elle King, Big Shawn, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, The Red Clay Strays and many others now offer salve-like music and live performances championing compassion, empathy, community and validation for the many facing difficult times.

“You go to the shows and it feels like more than a concert,” Bluestone says of Warren. “They’re sharing these traumas with him, experiences of loss. And he’s able to interact with people in a way that leave them feeling better about themselves and happier and able to deal. I’ve just never seen anything like that before. When we watched that in a 500-cap. room, we were like, ‘Whoa. This is really unique. This is a really an interesting community that he’s built and is developing.’ And it’s proven to be a very broad one that are resonating with his message….”

Wasserman’s Bluestone and Diamond are proponents of not skipping steps, meaning in artist development making sure no room is too big or undersold. When they started with Warren in 2022, he was still three years out from this summer’s explosive success.

“The first proper run we did a few shows in the 300-cap. rooms,” Bluestone says. “All the initial shows sold out. But it takes time for someone to connect with new music that’s coming out and choosing to go to a concert. We were very purposeful with, ‘OK, let’s see how this goes with a few smaller shows. Let’s see what the audience is like. Let’s see how crazy it is.’ They went really well. We did a broader tour of like 500-cap. rooms, like the Troubadour in L.A. Most of that tour sold out pretty quickly. The shows were really interesting. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a very clearly defined community. He’s calling his tour ‘The Cheaper Than Therapy Tour’ and it literally is therapy. It’s funny, but it’s also true.”

According to Pollstar Boxoffice Reports, in March Warren played two nights at the Manchester Academy selling more than 5,550 tickets and grossing $121,000 and the same month cleared $160,000 at London’s Eventim Apollo selling 5,089 tickets. But now, with “Ordinary’s success and his superstar guests, Warren’s jumping up steps, most recently Down Under.

“We sold out our Australia tour immediately,” Bluestone says. “That was 2,000-cap. rooms and it sold out like that. (Alex) went on TikTok and apologized to fans and said, ‘I’m so sorry. We sold out these shows so quickly. I want you to be at these shows. We are going to do everything possible to make sure you can come to these shows.’ We all as a team were like, ‘Let’s figure this out. Let’s make sure as many of his fans as possible can get to see the show.’ Because it’s really important to him that it’s a great experience for fans. We ended up upgrading that tour, which starts next month. We sold 10,000 tickets in Sydney, 8,500 tickets in Brisbane. He sold out at amphitheaters and arenas. That was within minutes when we upgraded from 2,000.”

For this tour, Warren is giving a dollar per ticket to Camp Kesem which provides free camps and programs for kids with parents fighting cancer. “It was extremely personal for him,” Bluestone says. “He chose this organization specifically. It’s refreshing when an artist prioritizes giving back. There are plenty of different causes where you can do that, but when it’s personal it’s even better, because he went through these things as a child and now he wants to help other children.”

Warren, according to his agent, is prioritizing secondary markets where many of his fans reside.

When asked of Warren’s next steps after such a spectacular summer, Bluestone says, “It’s going to be awesome going into 2026. He’ll be recording again as soon as he gets a break. All I can say is there are a lot of big things to come.”