Alex Warren Producer Adam Yaron On Why ‘We Had to Go There’ In Heartbreaking Lyrics For ‘Eternity’

Alex Warren has ruled the past several months with his exalted celebration of love, “Ordinary.” In addition to 10 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it spent all 14 weeks atop Billboard‘s seasonal Songs of the Summer chart. But his latest single takes a much more somber tone. “Eternity,” which is No. 83 in its sixth week on the Hot 100, heartbreakingly addresses Warren losing both his parents before he turned 21 years old and the acute, unabating sense of loss.

Both songs are featured on Warren’s first full-length Atlantic album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200. Adam Yaron, 26, produced and engineered the set and co-wrote the majority of the tracks — including both “Ordinary” and “Eternity” — which radiate emotion. “We always approach songwriting from a point of truth and vulnerability,” he says. “[With] ‘Eternity,’ there is something raw and almost uncomfortable about how heavy the lyric is.”

Below, Yaron reflects on his working relationship with Warren, his memories of creating the album’s biggest hits and more.

How did you and Alex meet?

We met at a session. I came in as a writer, and we just really connected and just continued working from there.

You co-wrote “Eternity” with Alex, Cal Shapiro and Mags Duval, which is about Alex losing his father at 9 years old and his mother at 20. How did it come about?

I met [Alex] a few months after he lost his mom, so I’ve been really close to his journey with loss. We had so many conversations about his dad and his mom. I think this was the last song to be written for the album. It came up that we hadn’t really tackled grief yet. It became apparent that it’s such a big part of his story, and we had to go there. The song breaks my heart. Putting it together musically was its own challenge, but it just started spilling out once we understood what we were going to talk about.

This was the last song you wrote for the album. Do you think you could have written that song earlier in the process?

I never thought about that. I suppose not. We had known each other at that point for — at least as a group — almost two years. I think we built up so much trust and had so many conversations about Alex and who he is and understanding his relationship to grief. “Ordinary” had been out already when we wrote this song, and a lot of things were starting to go really well. I think not having his parents there to witness all of this incredible success and recognition was really weighing on him. I know he really believes that they are watching him in some capacity. From there stemmed some of the lyrics: “I walked this world alone” kind of comes from that.

What was it like producing his vocal for the song?

Alex is one of those artists that gets on the mic and then it’s like, “Oh, wow. This is brought to life in a whole new way.” I think because “Eternity” in particular is so personal and vulnerable, it doesn’t take much to get that performance from him. I don’t think he sung this particular song that many times. It feels like he’s just telling the truth. I hope that comes across because in the room it was very palpable. We were in his house and set up this mic and a curtain to dampen the sound a little bit in his closet. It was very in the moment — looking back, that’s part of the magic of it. The recording process was very natural.

A version of this story appears in the Aug. 30, 2025, issue of Billboard.