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This week, Ella Langley beat a chart record held by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. The country singer’s Choosin’ Texas has now spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, making it the longest-running US No 1 by a female solo artist for a non-holiday single. The previous record holders, Houston’s I Will Always Love You and Carey’s We Belong Together, were bombastic pop events, the sort of unassailable hits that make sense as Hot 100 chartbusters. Choosin’ Texas, meanwhile, is a midtempo two-step with a relaxed vocal delivery and decidedly retro sound.
For Victoria Banks, a Nashville-based songwriter and instructor at Belmont University, the song’s breeziness is key to its success. “It’s a sleeper hit – it’s understated and unassuming,” she says. “Everything about the song throws back to a simpler time in country music that people are really craving.”
The lyrics to Choosin’ Texas tell the story of a Tennessee woman who accompanies her lover on a trip back to his home state of Texas – and discovers in real time that “his heart still belongs to the lone star state”. It’s heartbreak on a classic-country scale, which Langley expresses with lyrical homages to decades-old hits by Jerry Reed, Ronnie Millsap and George Strait. The danceable, guitar- and pedal steel-forward production evokes country hits from the late 70s and early 80s, albeit with a contemporary gloss.
“There are a lot of throwback elements to the song, but it was obviously recorded in a very modern way,” Banks says. “It’s not so throwback that we don’t relate to it.”
In a sign of country music’s continued dominance in the pop sphere, Choosin’ Texas is one of five country songs currently in the US top t10 on the all-genre Hot 100. Given country’s abysmal track record when it comes to playing women, it’s not for nothing that each of these songs – including Taylor Swift’s I Knew It, I Knew You, Stella Lefty’s Boston and Langley’s own Be Her and her Morgan Wallen duet I Can’t Love You Anymore – features a woman as the lead artist.
Historically, during moments when country crosses over into the mainstream, tensions arise over just how far the music has strayed from its roots. “Someone killed country music, cut out its heart and soul,” George Strait famously declared on Murder on Music Row, a 2000 duet with Alan Jackson lamenting the state of the Nashville industry in the late ‘90s – when artists like Faith Hill and Lonestar ruled the airwaves with ultrasmooth, country-pop confections. In more recent history, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter provoked endless discourse about what constitutes country music and who gets to participate.
Choosin’ Texas has largely dodged criticism of being “too pop”, in part due to the cleverness of the songwriting. Co-written with Miranda Lambert, Joybeth Taylor and Luke Dick, the song folds country signifiers – two-stepping, Texas and Tennessee, the interstate – into the emotional story of the song in a way that feels organic. Even the requisite Jack Daniels mention serves a narrative purpose; it matters that it’s Tennessee whiskey she’s drinking all by herself.
“All of these writers have been working in the Nashville market for years,” Banks explains. “So even though this is a song that they said they spat out in 30 minutes or whatever, it was coming through their instincts that have been developed for a long time about what is hooky and what pulls people in.”
Brian Mansfield, managing editor of the trade publication Country Insider, says that the song’s twangy-but-smooth sound makes it appealing to program directors – whether in country, pop or adult contemporary – who tend to avoid songs that would sound jarringly rootsy next to fluffier pop fare. “It’s a song that sounds good next to almost anything you can play, and that is an underrated part of creating the music mix for any format,” he says.
The song’s versatility also makes it well-suited to streaming playlists. According to Luminate, Choosin’ Texas racked up over half a billion streams in the first half of the year alone, making it the most-streamed song in the country by a wide margin.
As well as co-signs from veteran singers like Swift and Shania Twain, the song has also – as is now often a prerequisite for streaming success – been boosted by various viral social media moments. In October, shortly after Choosin’ Texas was released, TikTok user Lane Gorrell posted a video of himself performing an interpretive dance to the song in front of some nonplussed-looking cows. The clip racked up millions of views, and Gorrell eventually took his dance all the way to the Grand Ole Opry.
Then came the misheard lyric videos. Around January, in an echo of Taylor Swift’s famous “Starbucks lovers” saga from 2014, users started posting videos claiming they misheard the title phrase as “Jews in Texas” or even “Jews and Taxes”. Some also reported hearing the words “drinking Jack all by myself” as “drink and jack off by myself”. Langley laughed off the misheard lyrics in an interview with podcaster Theo Von in April – which of course only drew more attention to the trend. A clip from the same interview of a clearly smitten Von butchering the word “tzatziki” in front of his crush also went viral.
Enter the Ella Fellas. Langley’s male fanbase has made itself known with all manner of viral content, from uncomfortably earnest lip-syncing videos to clips of themselves looking enraptured at her concerts; there have even been Ella Fella birthday parties. Langley’s team has nurtured this following, reposting popular videos and sending Ella Fellas T-shirts to some of her most ardent supporters. In comparison with many pop fandoms, whose obsessions can skew antisocial, the Ella Fellas seem like a remarkably sane and joyous bunch.
“It’s one of those things that brings people together,” says Hunter Massey, a student at Georgia Southern University and TikToker whose videos of himself going buck wild to country songs have earned him an audience of his own. “There can be people from different walks of life, different parts of the country, but we all seem to have this love for her music, and that’s what makes us Ella Fellas.”
Massey is among the growing ranks of creators who get paid to post videos using artists’ songs on TikTok – including Langley’s. He says he sometimes turns down requests for songs that don’t speak to him, but he’s never had a problem promoting her music.
For him and other Ella Fellas, the appeal is in how down-to-earth she seems. She’s bolstered this perception with songs like Dandelion, where she sings that she “wasn’t made for a fancy crystal vase” and Somethin’ Simple, which finds her musing about giving up stardom in exchange for “a house on a hill, horse in the yard”.
“She’s not flashy, Hollywood, whatever,” Massey says. “It’s what we like about her.”
