One whole year of “Choosin’ Texas.”
Ella Langley scored a massive hit, to put it mildly, with her single “Choosin’ Texas” this year, which
Launching off the success of her Riley Green collaboration, “you look like you love me” throughout 2024 and 2025, as well as other hits such as “weren’t for the wind,” the Alabama native has become nothing short of a phenomenon thanks to the megahit that is “Choosin’ Texas,” and, in turn, she has captured the hearts of nearly everyone in the country and the world over the past year.
Since its release on October 17th, it is now the longest-running #1 hit by a female artist this century, the only country song by a woman to triple up and go #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, Hot Country and Country Airplay charts simultaneously.
In case that wasn’t enough, thanks to the success of her sophomore album, Dandelion, which debuted at #1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 and sold 169,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week, Langley became just the second woman in history to hold the #1 album and song in the U.S. simultaneously with a country song/album.
Last month, she made U.S. history by officially capturing the longest-running #1 hit in U.S. history with 23 weeks (now 24), passing Mariah Carey’s long-standing record of 22 atop the all-genre Billboard Hot 100.
The song was co-written by Ella along with Miranda as well as Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor, and Miranda is also featured on background vocals, and her touch and style is apparent throughout the entire song, which is probably why it’s one of my favorites Ella has ever released.
Soaked in steel and full of heartbreak, it finds Ella reminiscing on a lost love who fell in love with a Texas girl, leaving her heartbroken in Tennessee.
They were inspired while on writer’s retreat, the first time Ella got to write with one of her musical heroes in Miranda:
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.”
Ella released the song as a single one year ago today, obviously having no clue how massive it would become as the lead single of her massively successful sophomore album, Dandelion.
She shared an Instagram post that documented the whole process of recording the song, and how she put it all together in the studio. In the caption, Ella says she’s still “constantly & consistently amazed” by everything the song has accomplished, adding that “thankful is an understatement” for how she feels about all of it:
“One year of ‘Choosin’ Texas.’ This song… I am constantly & consistently amazed by what this song has done & how much y’all continue to love it.
You’ll never know how much it means to me & everyone involved in making it come to life, thankful is an understatement. Here’s to 365 days of madness.”
It’s a pop culture phenomenon that has launched Ella into another stratosphere. For Ella, it’s the song that changed her life and will be in the history books forever:
Turn it up…
“Choosin’ Texas”
