By Larisha Paul, Rolling Stone | Alex Warren’s breakthrough single, “Ordinary,” has a backstory made for TV. The 24-year-old artist wrote it about his wife, Kouvr Annon, whom he started dating when they were both 18. It wasn’t the best time to jump into something so new and intense. He’d already experienced the grief of losing his father as a child, only to be kicked out of his home as soon as he reached legal age. His mother, struggling with alcoholism, wanted him gone. With nowhere to go, Warren ended up living in his car. Four months later, Annon left home to join him.
Warren’s story has all the fixings of an underdog narrative: love, loss, a light at the end of the tunnel. These are the boxes producers typically hope to check when setting the scene for an audience to meet a new artist for the first time — not the ones shaping records in the recording studio, but the producers making competition series like The Voice and American Idol. The format is predictable. The viewer is fed emotional anecdotes to raise the stakes. By the time the often young, always hopeful singer steps in front of the judges, there’s already an acute sense of investment in their success. They just need the song to bring it all home. The almighty TikTok algorithm assured that Warren didn’t need to trauma dump on The Voice or American Idol to find his audience. But if he had, “Ordinary” would have been his ticket to a four-chair turn.
The single, which currently sits at Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100, follows the signature singing competition formula — not necessarily the specific songs that are often picked for auditions, but the structural consistency of how those songs are performed. The production must be sparse, so the vocal isn’t overpowered. The vocal tone has to be distinct enough to spark intrigue. And within a minute and a half, it needs to build into a dramatic octave jump, one final Hail Mary in case the audition is nearing its end and no buzzers have been pressed. Warren hits every mark with “Ordinary” — an unremarkable piano melody opens the song and the octave jump hits right at the 50-second mark. But he isn’t alone. “The Voice Audition Core” songs are all over the pop charts.
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Read more on this story including about Benson Boone’s and Chappell Roan’s songs:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/why-does-everything-sound-audition-133000783.html