Alex Warren Explains Why He Loves It When Fans Have Him Autograph Their Dead Parents’ Ashes

Alex Warren‘s fans aren’t your ordinary fanbase. In his conversation with Megan Moroney for Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians issue, the TikToker-turned-singer shared that his listeners have taken to bringing loved ones’ ashes to his shows for him to autograph.

“As I’ve made these songs and I played these shows, people will bring their dead parents to my show,” he said in the piece published Tuesday (Oct. 20). “They’ll put the ashes in the urn or in a bag, and they’ll bring them to my show and have me sign them.”

Warren noted that it would probably make “a lot of” other artists “uncomfortable,” but not him. “I love it,” he explained. “You get to keep that person alive with every conversation and you have this beautiful memory. You can’t control loss, you can’t control grief, but you can control how you react to it.”

The Hype House alum also feels a special connection to his fans who’ve lost parents, as his father died of kidney cancer when Warren was just 9 years old and his mother passed away in 2021. But while it’s something that strengthens his relationship with his listeners, it can also make hate comments more hurtful.

“If someone hates on me or my music, sadly that is me,” Warren told Moroney. “That’s me, motherf–ker. Someone’s like, ‘I hate this song. It’s bland, and it says nothing.’ I was like, ‘F–k, I wrote that song about my dead dad, a–hole.'”

“I feel the exact same way,” the country star agreed. “I’ve read everything I could read about myself. I’m a little numb to it, but yeah, it’s difficult to [hear], ‘I hate this song.’ That’s me. I didn’t make that up. That came straight up from me.”

Launched by the success of his 10-week Billboard Hot 100-topper “Ordinary,” Warren has had a breakout year. His debut album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, climbed to No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in August 2025 nearly a year after it first entered the chart, and his 2026 follow-up, Wildchild, peaked at No. 2.

“My entire music career has been centered around healing my childhood self and I really think we did it,” he wrote on Instagram after Wildchild‘s chart entry. “These songs would have helped me so much growing up and I’m proud to think that it could be doing that for someone right now.”

He was also a best new artist nominee at last year’s Grammys, where there was an unexpected hiccup in his performance of “Ordinary” as technical issues threw off his timing. It scared him in the moment, but according to Warren, it turned out to be “the best night of my life.”

“It instilled confidence in me, because I always thought that people hated me,” he told Moroney. “And some people do hate me. When that happened … I was like, ‘Everyone in this room hates me. Everyone’s making fun of me. Everyone’s talking about me. I don’t want to even see what the internet’s talking about.’ And all my friends are like, ‘Dude, check online’ … And I look and everyone’s like, ‘I know what happened. I figured out what happened, all these things.’ It was the best night of my life, and it was a freak accident.”