A wild story that led to an incredible song.
We are in the final stretch until Ella Langley releases her highly-anticipated single “Choosin’ Texas” later this week.
Ella Langley fans have been itching for this song since she debuted the Miranda Lambert co-write at the start of 2025 while playing in Nacogdoches, Texas. However, given the highs and lows that Langley experienced as 2025 unfolded, notably taking home five ACM Awards this past April and leading all artists with 6 CMA Award nominations at the upcoming ceremony in November, she hit a roadblock on her whirlwind of a year, leading her to take some time off the road to focus on her health. While Langley never specified if her health issues were mental or physically related, given the rate at which she was going, I can only assume that she needed a hard reset on both.
With her taking some time off, fans were not sure if we’d get any more new music in 2025, also given she confirmed another full-length record would not hit the shelves until 2026.
Fast forward to her performance a few weeks ago at the Live At The Station festival in College Station, Texas, Langley dropped the bomb that fans can expect one or two new tracks before the end of the year. Before performing her highly anticipated unreleased song, “Choosing Texas,” she said:
“There will be maybe one or two off of it this year. This might or might not be the next one… or the first one, I guess.”
It did not take long after Live at the Station for Langley to share with fans that “Choosin’ Texas” was one of the one or two singles that would come out this year. During her sold-out set in Durant, Oklahoma, at Choctaw Music Fest, Langley confirmed that not only is “Choosin’ Texas” going to be the lead single off of her upcoming album, but it’s coming out next Friday, October 17th.
@amyausburn123 We’re about to get new @Ella Langley #ChoosingTexas and she wrote it with @Miranda Lambert #ellalangley #ellalangleymusic #ellalangleyconcert #fyp ♬ original sound – Amy Ausburn
Before performing the song to the crowd in Durant, Langley revealed that she wrote the song with none other than Miranda Lambert at a writer’s retreat last October, noting how incredible it was to write with one of her musical heroes.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve been such a massive fan of Ms. Miranda Lambert, and it’s been the coolest thing to get to become friends the last couple years. I mean, come on. You just look up to her. She’s a legend; she’s an icon. She’s an incredible songwriter, and I’ve always wanted to write a song with her.
It was a year ago this month. I got my first opportunity to write with her. We were on one of these things called a writer’s retreat, where you take a couple of your favorite people and you just sit down for however many days and write songs. And hopefully some of them are good.”
She recalled to fans in Oklahoma that the tune was written after Lambert began telling her some funny stories from her younger years, but kept the details of the story pretty vague. However, during a set at the Listening Room in Nashville, Tennessee, Langley went into more detail about the story that inspired the tune, and it’s wild to say the least.
Langley shares that after the two had gotten comfortable with each other, Lambert began to tell Langley about a time she got pulled over with a kangaroo in her car.
“She told me she had a pet kangaroo, and she was doing something, she was driving down a dirt road, and the kangaroo was in the back seat, and the dog was in the front seat. There was a lot going on. Then she got pulled over with a kangaroo in the passenger seat. And I was like, ‘This story’s as good as I thought it would be.’
She said the lady cop pulled her over, and she’s like, ‘Of course I have Texas plates on the back of my car.'”
After hearing that, Langley responded to Lambert, saying, I’m sure the cop could tell she was from Texas, given the chaos unfolding in the car with a kangaroo and a dog in the passenger and back seats.
“And I was like, ‘She’s from Texas, I can tell.’ And from that phrase right there, I don’t know, I was walking to the bathroom and I started to go, ‘She’s from Texas, I can tell by the way he’s two-steppin’ around the room.’
And Miranda was walking behind me to the bathroom, a separate one, and she was like, ‘Wait a minute! The b***h he went with, she’s from Texas, I can tell.’ The girl he went with, you know?
And from there, I think the song fell out in about 30 minutes, and it’s one of my favorite ones we got off the retreat that weekend. And it’s my first song with Miss Miranda Lambert coming out.”
Thank goodness for kangaroos and cops for making this song come to life. I can’t wait to hear this full in just a few short days.
@ellalangleyarchive this was not on my bingo card AT ALL @Ella Langley #country #fyp ♬ original sound – Ella Langley Archive
Check out a preview of the single while you’re here:
