Alex Warren’s breakthrough single “Ordinary” has a backstory made for TV. The 23-year-old artist wrote it about his wife, Kouvr Annon, who 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 Three 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.
Before Benson Boone sat down at the piano during his audition for American Idol in 2020, he admitted to the judges that he only realized he could sing a year prior. He briefly fumbled through finding the chords for Aidan Martin’s “Punchline,” then had one minute to impress the panel. The octave jump arrived at the halfway point. “I see you winning American Idol if you want to,” Katy Perry told him. Boone decided against it. He dropped out of Season 19 after reaching the Top 24. That season, the show ditched its BMG recording contract offer for the winner and instead partnered with 19 Entertainment to focus on post-show artist development. Boone already had a sizable TikTok following and, with no guaranteed deal on the table, figured he could go further on his own.
Now, Boone’s breakthrough single “Beautiful Things” is the song of choice for new batches of hopefuls. In September 2024, The Voice contestant Creigh Riepe performed the record for his blind audition. For the first minute, he sang to the backs of chairs. “Don’t take,” he sang, echoing Boone’s drawl. Then came the jump: “These beautiful things that I’ve got.” Coaches Gwen Stefani and Reba McEntire both smashed their buttons before the vocal run wrapped. When Boone traded television for TikTok, it was that same portion of the song that won his audience over.
“Beautiful Things” currently sits at Number 10 on the Hot 100, just below Teddy Swim’s “Lose Control,” a more soulful take on the reliable format. It starts off strong and the standout run begins 45 seconds in. Swims has notched 88 weeks on the chart with the record, compared to Boone’s 65 weeks and Warren’s 11 weeks. “Lose Control” landed both American Idol Season 22 contestant Ajii Hafeez and Season 23 contestant Jamier Jones a unanimous yes. Jelly Roll, another benefactor of the audition song boost, recently appeared on American Idol as a musical guest and artist-in-resident. Even veteran pop stars Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars deployed this formula on “Die With a Smile,” though they could be credited as co-authors of the blueprint.
The unofficial catalog of competition series songs has continued to expand in recent years beyond classic picks like John Mayer’s “Gravity,” Lewis Capaldi’s “Before You Go,” and nearly every Ed Sheeran ballad there is. In 2022, Stephen Sanchez leveraged his online audience to make a hit out of the old-timey ballad “Until I Found You” after gaining popularity from covering songs from Harry Styles, James Bay, and Cage the Elephant. Now, the record is in the grouping of popular songs that became more memorable than the person who sings them, like Duncan Laurence’s Eurovision-winning “Arcade” or Dean Lewis’ “Be Alright.” A perfect, near-blank canvas for auditions.
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When Chappell Roan auditioned for The Voice over a decade ago, she performed the classic Rihanna ballad “Stay,” but it didn’t check the right boxes. “The producer or whoever the fuck was watching did not even look up from his phone,” she told W Magazine. “I went up there and sang a cappella, the scariest thing ever. He never really looked at me.” Now, contestants are hoping their renditions of her songs will be their ticket to the top. The Voice contestant Conor James, who auditioned with the classic “I Say a Little Prayer,” performed “Pink Pony Club” in the playoffs, but was ultimately eliminated. It could be the case that some artists innately have too much personality in their music for their songs to be easily molded to someone else’s voice, especially rising singers who don’t have an established identity yet.
The way that musicians stand in front of a panel of judges isn’t all that different from how they compete for attention on TikTok. Instead of trying to get them to turn their chair around, or give them a yes, they’re hoping to keep you from scrolling away. At least with these shows, they’re guaranteed a minute or so to make their case. Online, they have a few seconds at most. But a television audience is smaller. American Idol’s viewership has dipped to 5.5 million from 11 million in 2014, when Remi Wolf competed, and 25 million in 2004, when Fantasia Barrino won. The Voice brought in an average of 7 million viewers in 2024, down from 14 million in 2014, when both Christina Grimmie and Morgan Wallen tried out. Meanwhile, TikTok has launched more careers in the past five years than The Voice and American Idol have in over a decade.
With TikTok, songs that wouldn’t quite fit the competition series format — like the currently simmering Hot 100 hits Lola Young’s “Messy,” Sombr’s “Back to Friends,” or Malcolm Todd’s “Chest Pain” — can still find a crowd that shares the same sense of excitement about having potentially discovered an artist on the brink of stardom. Watching these shows feels like that sometimes, but the difference in format doesn’t protect from audiences being fickle. Millions can root for an artist they watch perform twice a week and even vote for them to win after each episode. But what keeps their attention once the season wraps? Or when their prized contestant debuts with music that doesn’t sound like the songs they’ve been covering for these vocal showcase series? Viral artists often face the same challenge of building a career out of a moment.
“Ordinary” is Warren’s second Hot 100 entry (“Burning Down” spent 14 weeks on the chart and peaked at Number 69) but it’s his first real hit. He recently released a “Wedding Version” of the track that leans into Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” effect. Meanwhile, Boone is trying his hand with synth-y guitar pop on songs like “Sorry I’m Here For Someone Else” and “Mystical Magical.” He seems to be hoping to get some more distance from the competition stage he once walked away from, only to be inadvertently dragged back by his own success. “I think I’m getting to the point where I just want people to know that there’s more than just that song,” he told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “I’m still proud of it. And I’ll be performing it for a while.” So will season after season of The Voice contestants.
From Rolling Stone US
