It will bring tears to my eyes every single time… so I get it.
Ella Langley is now a country superstar thanks to her hit crossover “Choosin’ Texas,” which as well as her recently-released hit sophomore album Dandelion, which was produced by the one and only Mrs. Miranda Lambert.
Miranda also co-wrote “Choosin’ Texas,” and the two of them have formed an incredible bond and deep friendship that goes way beyond just a professional thing. Ella is around my age, and like me, she grew up loving Miranda’s music, and she says the first song she ever heard of Miranda’s was her smash hit “The House That Built Me,” which came at a very difficult time in her family life.
In a recent interview with Elaina Smith, Ella revealed that her family lost her childhood home when she was around 13-years-old because due to financial reasons, and it was around the time “The House That Built Me” was released, and it kickstarted her love for Miranda which has last for years now.
I can’t even imagine how hard that was, and I have to imagine Ella has cried more than a few times listening to “The House That Built Me”:
“And something I really watch Miranda do this last year, she was direct support from Morgan, and I was first at three. But I went out to watch her do ‘The House That Built Me,’ and that song to me like, we lost our house as a kid to financial stuff. I was like 13 or something, you know, and that song came out right around then. And I’ve never felt so connected to a song or a person in my life listening to that song. And that’s really what started my love for her, that’s the first thing I ever heard of hers.”
She recalled hearing Miranda play it live last year when Miranda was Morgan Wallen’s direct support on tour, and Ella was the first of three to open the show. She couldn’t believe all of the emotion Miranda put into it, considering she’s done it so many times at this point. Somehow, she made it feel like the first time, and Ella says it was everything she wanted.
That type of emotion is why Ella says she cuts very few outside writes, though that one is an outside write for Miranda, but because she connects with it so deeply, you’d never know it:
“So I’d never seen her play live, and we’ve done this whole record together, like everything, you know. And it’s weird, because I’m sitting here writing songs with Miranda, and you forget it’s Miranda until she sings something, you’re like, ‘Is that really you?’
But I’m still such a fan of her and what she’s built, so going out there watching her sing that song, I mean, how times has Miranda sang ‘The House That Built Me’ at this point? Who knows, so many. But she gave me every bit of emotion I wanted out of her to sing that song.
She could’ve just had a [bad day], you know, who knows… but that’s how she delivers the songs. and to me, that’s so important. That’s why there’s one outside song on this record, because when I’m singing them, it’s how do I relate to the fans if I can’t relate the songs that I’m singing?”
The only outside write Ella cut on Dandelion is the incredible song “Speaking Terms,” which she’s spoken about extensively, and the first time you hear it, it’s easy to understand why she made that exception for that song.
Of course, Miranda’s “The House That Built Me” was written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, and was actually originally intended for her ex-husband Blake Shelton to record. But once Miranda heard it for the first time on a CD demo he played, it resonated so deeply that she knew she had to record it herself.
She said previously in an interview with Today that she broke down the very first time she heard it (like many of us did, I’m sure):
“It was beautiful… I mean, I just started bawling from the second I heard it. Blake was like, ‘If you have a reaction to this song like that, then you need to cut it.”
Miranda ultimately included it as third single from her 2009 third studio album Revolution, where it eventually peaked at #1 and remains the fastest-rising single of her career. She won three ACM’s at that 2010 show, including one for Female Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year for Revolution and Video of the Year for “White Liar”. The following year, she won three more ACM’s for “The House That Built Me”, including Song of the Year, Single of the Year, and Video of the Year.
It’s one of those songs for me that I can’t really listen to all that much, even though I think it’s one of the greatest country songs ever written… it makes me too emotional, and even though I love sad country songs more than anything, even for an ice queen like me, there are some that are just too much most days, and I don’t have the emotional capacity for it.
Ella just gets it, and I think she will only continue to see more success as she follows Miranda’s lead while still carving out a path that’s completely her own… and I think we need a “The House That Built Me” cover from Ella now, too:
Of course, I have to leave you with this…
“The House That Built Me”
