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Alex Warren drove to the 2026 Grammy Awards with a good feeling. He was nominated for Best New Artist and was supposed to perform with his fellow nominees in a medley performance – including his hit “Ordinary.” But 30 seconds before taking the stage, right after Katseye finished her performance, Warren noticed that his in-ears weren’t working. According to the motto “The show must go on,” he still went through with the performance. It was obvious that something was wrong – but it was too late to fix the problem.
“It was a nightmare,” Warren told reporters Call Her Daddy and spoke publicly about the breakdown for the first time. “We rehearsed all week. All week. It was perfect. It went well – and to this day I don’t know exactly what happened.” The singer suspects that the radio frequencies from the many cell phones in the arena could have something to do with it. Either way, he spent almost his entire set barely able to hear himself.
“There is no mix, I just hear my voice extremely loud,” he said. “I go down the steps and immediately it starts echoing in my right ear. So I pull it out – which, unfortunately, only made it worse. And then when I’m on stage I hear a click in my ear again, I put it straight back in and it works.” By then the performance was almost over and he was standing on an elevated platform several meters above the ground. “I just wanted to get this over with, and when we got to the top I was like, OK,” he continued. “I’m afraid of heights. I have a real fear of heights – but the whole time I didn’t think about being in the air. I just thought, ‘Please bring me back down in time.'”
Chappell Roan’s words of encouragement
Warren got a pep talk from Chappell Roan, who won Best New Artist in 2025. “She came to me and said, ‘Dude, if anyone understands what you’re going through, it’s the people in this room – and you sounded amazing,'” he said. “I was down, and I think she noticed. She came to my table and was just the sweetest, and I was like, ‘I love you.'” “Down” is almost an understatement. Warren described how he spent the rest of the ceremony immersed in himself. “I had my head on my wife’s shoulder the whole time. I didn’t want to look up. I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” he said. “Chappell 100 percent saw that I was just exhausted and she came to me. That was just sweet.”
Warren felt like leaving the ceremony, especially when this year’s winner was set to be announced shortly after the medley. Backstage, he fought back tears as people urged him to return to his seat in time. “I sit down and it immediately switches to the nomination for Best New Artist, which I was on the list for – and immediately I think: I’m so exhausted,” said Warren. “I thought, ‘There’s no chance of me winning this. I just blew this.'” Olivia Dean won the award. “I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I mean, I was really happy for her. She 100 percent deserves it, no question about it,” Warren added. “But after that I was like, ‘Damn, I want to go home.'”
