Country Music May Have Found Its Next Superstar
I’m going to start this with a confession that probably won’t earn me many invitations to Nashville.
I’m not really a country music guy.
I respect it. I understand the talent involved. I can appreciate the storytelling, musicianship and generations of performers who built the genre into one of America’s biggest cultural exports. But if you hand me control of the playlist, we’re probably going somewhere else.
Unless Dwight Yoakam comes on.
Then everybody shuts up.
But lately there’s been another exception to my admittedly stubborn rule, because Ella Langley is phenomenal, and “Choosin’ Texas” has become one of those songs that refuses to stay inside whatever musical box you originally intended to put it in.
Apparently I’m not alone.
“Choosin’ Texas” has now spent an almost absurd 17 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, moving Langley into sole possession of fourth place among the longest-running No. 1 songs in the chart’s history.
Seventeen weeks.
At some point we’re going to have to stop calling this a hit and start calling it a hostile takeover.
Ella Langley Is Chasing Some Ridiculous Chart History
Consider the company Langley has now passed.
At 16 weeks were Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito,” and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day.”
“Choosin’ Texas” has now outlasted all three.
Only a handful of songs remain ahead of her. Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” each spent 19 weeks at No. 1, while Mariah Carey’s seemingly immortal Christmas juggernaut “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has accumulated 22 weeks on top.
And here’s where things get interesting.
“Choosin’ Texas” isn’t fading away.
The song has now broken into the Top 10 of Billboard’s pop airplay chart, giving Langley another source of momentum as mainstream stations increasingly embrace a record that began firmly rooted in country.
That crossover isn’t some manufactured attempt to bolt a pop chorus onto a country song, either. The record simply connected.
Funny how that works.
Make something people actually like and occasionally they’ll listen to it.
Revolutionary stuff.
Okay, I Understand the Hype
Here’s what won me over.
“Choosin’ Texas” doesn’t sound like it’s desperately trying to convince you it’s important.
It’s fun. It’s melodic. It’s upbeat without becoming disposable, and there’s an old-school quality running underneath the production that gives it enough personality to stand apart from a lot of today’s painfully polished radio music.
The song was co-written by Langley alongside Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor, and it manages to bridge traditional country storytelling with a chorus that works far beyond country radio. That’s increasingly rare, and probably a major reason people who don’t normally live anywhere near the genre are finding themselves listening to it.
People like me.
Dammit.
Then They Put Luke Grimes in the Video
As if the song needed any additional help, Langley turned the official “Choosin’ Texas” video into a miniature country-western movie.
And she didn’t exactly raid the local community theater for casting.
Luke Grimes, better known to millions of Yellowstone fans as Kayce Dutton, plays Langley’s love interest. Ava Phillippe appears as his former flame, while Miranda Lambert performs in the saloon and Kaitlin Butts joins an enormous collection of musicians, rodeo personalities and other guests.
Langley also co-directed the video with Wales Toney and Caylee Robillard, and the production was filmed at the historic Stagecoach Ballroom in Fort Worth.
It’s cinematic without taking itself too seriously, and Grimes fits the role so naturally that you half expect Rip Wheeler to walk through the door and start throwing people into horse troughs.
Honestly, that would probably get another 20 million views.
This Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere
Langley may suddenly look like country music’s newest unstoppable force, but her rise was already well underway before “Choosin’ Texas” became a monster.
Her collaboration with Riley Green, “You Look Like You Love Me,” became her first major crossover breakthrough and helped establish her nationally. It also turned into an awards magnet.
At the 2024 CMA Awards, Langley and Green won Musical Event of the Year for the song. The following year, Langley dominated the 2025 ACM Awards, winning five awards, including New Female Artist of the Year, Single of the Year and Music Event of the Year. She entered that ceremony as the night’s most-nominated artist.
That’s not a bad warm-up act for what came next.
And now “Choosin’ Texas” has taken things somewhere entirely different.
Seventeen Weeks and Somehow Still Growing
What makes this run particularly fascinating is that the song’s audience hasn’t simply shifted from streaming to radio while overall interest declined.
It’s still enormous across both.
The latest reported figures put “Choosin’ Texas” at roughly 24.9 million official streams for the week, while its radio audience climbed to approximately 54.5 million impressions.
That matters because songs usually don’t spend four months at No. 1 by accident.
At some point the novelty disappears, the TikTok trend moves on, another major artist releases something enormous, and everybody’s attention wanders toward the next shiny object.
Except people keep choosing Texas.
The song has already set a remarkable benchmark for a female country artist. By late July, its 15-week run had become the longest Hot 100 reign by a female solo artist for a non-holiday song. Two weeks later, she’s apparently still refusing to leave.
And Now I’m Waiting to See What Ella Langley Does Next
One gigantic song can happen to almost anyone.
Building a career from it is the hard part.
That’s what makes Ella Langley interesting right now.
She’s already demonstrated that “Choosin’ Texas” wasn’t her first good record, and she’s shown she can operate as a songwriter, performer and visual storyteller rather than simply standing in front of a microphone while an entire industry machine does everything else.
If she can string together a few more songs with this combination of personality, melody and crossover appeal, we might not be watching somebody enjoy her moment.
We might be watching the beginning of a very long career.
And apparently I’ll be listening.
Don’t get carried away, country music.
Dwight Yoakam still has permanent diplomatic immunity around here.
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