Alex Warren Wildchild Follows 13 Weeks at Number One
5 min read
Alex Warren performing live.
Alex Warren performing live.
One entry. One Number 1. That is the whole of Alex Warren’s Official Albums Chart record going into this week, and it is the figure that makes the follow-up interesting. Alex Warren Wildchild arrives on 28 August as his second studio album, thirteen tracks long, carrying a singles run behind it that took seventy years of chart history to break.
The singles column is where the volume sits. Official Charts credits Warren with 10 UK Top 40 entries, five of them Top 10s, and 13 weeks at Number 1 from a single song. The albums column has one line in it. Wildchild is the record that decides whether that line becomes a pattern or stays a one-off.
The Chart Record Wildchild Has to Follow
Warren’s first Top 40 appearance came in September 2024 with Carry You Home. Six months later he had a Number 1. According to Official Charts’ full history for the artist, his singles tally now reads 10 Top 40 entries, 10 Top 75 entries and five Top 10s, with 43 weeks spent inside the Top 10 and 166 inside the Top 40.
Stretch the window to the Top 75 and the total reaches 227 weeks. Those are accumulation figures, and they are unusual for an artist two years into a chart career. They are also concentrated. A large share of that time belongs to one song.
The albums side is thinner by design. One album, one Number 1, one Top 10, 27 weeks inside the Top 10, 75 weeks in the Top 40 and 81 weeks on the Top 75. You’ll Be Alright, Kid reached the summit on 25 July 2025 and has been on the chart ever since. Almost the entire life of that record has been spent in the Top 40, which is the part that makes it awkward competition for its own successor.
Thirteen Weeks That Rewrote a Seventy-Year Record
Ordinary is the song that did the damage. It was Warren’s first UK Number 1, a chamber-pop record that Official Charts describes as influenced by Hozier and Florence + The Machine, and it did not move for a very long time.
At nine weeks it passed Elvis Presley. Official Charts reported in May 2025 that Ordinary had become the longest-running Number 1 by a US male solo artist in 70 years, going one better than Presley’s It’s Now or Never, which logged eight weeks in 1960. The only longer run by an American male soloist was Slim Whitman’s Rose Marie, an 11-week stint from 1955.
Warren passed that too. By June 2025 Ordinary had reached a 12th consecutive week at the top, which Official Charts confirmed as the most consecutive weeks at Number 1 by a US artist in Official Singles Chart history. The final tally on the artist page is 13 weeks at Number 1.
The reading is straightforward. Warren did not arrive with a wide catalogue of hits. He arrived with one song that refused to leave, and a second album now has to convert that into something with more than one column.
A Title Taken From His Father
The album name is not a marketing choice. Warren has said it comes from what his late father called him. “Growing up, my dad used to call me Wildchild so it’s always had a special meaning and I even have it tattooed on me,” he told Hello Rayo.
He has framed the record as a change of position rather than a change of subject. Where the debut was, in his words, a man who is broken, this one is a man who is trying to heal. He has described making it as healing and therapeutic, and a way to keep finding out more about himself.
The title track carries a guest. Warren has said that after his father died he sat in his father’s car and a John Mayer song was the first thing to play. He put his father’s voice on a song, texted Mayer to ask him to appear on it, and Mayer played the guitar solo.
Thirteen Tracks, Six Already Released
Wildchild runs to 13 songs: Emerald Eyes, Same Stars, Passenger, Rescuer, Cry Wolf, Fine Place To Die, Are You Having Fun, Alex?, I Miss You More, Only Thing Left, Fever Dream, I Won’t Go Back Again, Last Time and the title track.
Six of those went out ahead of release as singles: Rescuer, Fever Dream, Fine Place To Die, Passenger, I Miss You More and Won’t Go Back Again. Official Charts notes that Fever Dream reached Number 3.
That is an unusually high pre-release ratio, and it matters to the first-week figure. Songs already streaming for weeks arrive with their own accumulated counts, which tends to lift an album’s opening tally and flatten its second week. It is the same shape a lot of streaming-era pop debuts take.
Warren has singled out I Miss You More as the hardest of them. He has said it is difficult to listen to and that he does not play it live because it is too difficult to sing.
The Albums Column Is the Thin One
A perfect strike rate is only impressive while the sample stays small, and this is the week the sample doubles. One album at Number 1 is a strike rate of 100 per cent. Two albums, one at Number 1, is 50 per cent.
The comparison worth making is with debut records that front-loaded their hits. Our look at how Myles Smith’s debut album already contained his biggest hits covers the same structural problem from the other side: when the singles do the work first, the album becomes a collection point rather than an event.
Warren’s position is a version of that. Ordinary is not on Wildchild. The song that produced 13 weeks at Number 1 belongs to the previous record, which is still on the chart and still selling. The new album competes with it.
What to Watch on This Week’s Chart
Three figures will tell the story. The first is the opening position, and the release week around it is not a quiet one. Post Malone’s 2016 debut mixtape August 26 reaches streaming for the first time, newly remastered, with guest turns from 2 Chainz, Jeremih, Lil Yachty and Jaden Smith. The Prince estate opens the vault for Timeless, a set of 10 rare and unreleased recordings spanning 1977 to 2016 from an artist with five UK Number 1 albums, 22 Top 10s and 34 Top 40 entries behind him.
Pulp document their comeback on Live!, recorded across two nights at The O2 in June 2025, the same week More became their third UK Number 1. Perrie gives her Top 5 self-titled debut a Fan Edition, adding Passenger Princess and 2-2, co-written with RAYE. Any of those can take units out of a first week.
The second is the gap between Wildchild and You’ll Be Alright, Kid. A debut with 81 weeks on the Top 75 has a long tail, and a second album that cannot outsell its predecessor in week one is a signal about where the audience actually sits.
The third is the second-week drop. With six of 13 tracks already released, the first-week number is partly borrowed. Week two is the one that shows what the album added.
Warren’s tally so far is one Number 1 single, 13 weeks at the top, 10 Top 40 entries and a Number 1 debut album. Wildchild is the first release he has put out with an existing record to defend rather than build.
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