Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is a Phenomenon: Will It Change the Landscape for Women?

Today, Ella Langley made history - her single “Choosin’ Texas” made her the first woman to hit the Hot 100 (all genre), Hot Country and Country Airplay charts, all at the same time. To be honest, these days it’s a feat hitting any one of these alone as a woman, so the fact that Langley topped all of them at once shows just what a monster artist she is in the genre and beyond, with a monster song. Chances are, you’ve probably hummed it once or twice since it was released last year - or maybe 50 or 100 times? Written with Miranda Lambert, Joybeth Taylor and Luke Dick, it’s endlessly catchy, but not cloyingly so, using a well crafted, delightful hook and a lot of explicitly country music textures. To be honest, when I first heard it, I couldn’t stop playing it - but I never thought it would reach these heights. Not because it wasn’t good - it’s awesome - but because it’s twangy as hell and sung by a woman. Not a winning combo for country radio these days or any days, to be honest.

But sometimes, a song gets so big you can’t deny it - “Choosin’ Texas” has been streaming like crazy (130+ million on Spotify alone) and spreading like fire on TikTok, with country radio actually reflecting audience demand for once - if there’s anything to call progress, I will give them that! What I love about this song is how it aligns with the current neotrad shift, but feels very aligned to Langley’s vulnerable perspective - never needing to be sunny as hell for the benefit of others, leaning into the melancholy and the edge when she wants to. What it doesn’t include are the boring Music Row manufactured mid-tempo machine beats that seem to accompany most Country Radio tunes of late. From the musicality to the lyrics to Langley’s delivery, it feels just as enjoyable as it does real. She's an artist with a clear vision.

Of course, you also can’t deny that Langley is riding a moment right now. “I think it's the perfect storm of a record,” RJ Curtis, who heads up CRS, told me. “Ella is on a sharp trajectory to stardom and it seems everything she touches is working right now. Big song, big artist.” Her stardom is skyrocketing, but country radio has flubbed this one before (see: airplay for "Rainbow" after Kacey Musgraves won Album of the Year at the Grammys among many others).

It’s also of the moment: country music is big right now haven't you heard? (rings the gong every time someone says this), so while she’s the first woman to hit this particular trio, the genre has made a sizeable imprint on the Billboard 100 lately with Morgan Wallen, Shaboozey, Zach Bryan feat. Kacey Musgraves and others, as well as with Beyoncé and “Texas Hold ‘Em,” a song that surely whetted the national appetite for something like “Choosin’ Texas” but probably won’t get much credit for doing so. Less than 10 women have ever done this with a country song, though. It's huge.

“Choosin’ Texas” will conquer pop radio soon, too, no doubt. It’s just that big of a song. And I think it will make a lot more people fall in love with Ella Langley, but also fall in love with country as a genre, just by nature of how truly country-sounding it is - and I am very psyched about both of those things.

But I wanted to take a couple paragraphs to talk about the merit of the song and the merit of the artist before delving into the other issue - the history-making part. The internet is flooded with congratulations and posts noting how Langley is joining “an elite club” of women and whatnot, with this charting feat. And don’t get me wrong, as someone who cares deeply about gender inequities in country music, obviously, I think Langley deserves all the flowers she can get. This is a moment to be celebrated, full stop.

But more importantly, it is a moment I hope will be duplicated, by not just Langley but others after her. Which brings me back to the question I posed in the title of this newsletter: will it change the landscape for women? And this, I suppose, is where I admit to a little bit of bait-and-switch, because we’re asking the right question to the wrong people. Each time a woman starts to gain traction on country radio, she is saddled with the same sorts of expectations: will she open doors for others? Will she change the landscape? Will she do it? We put the responsibility on the women themselves instead of altering the internal systems and asking the programmers, labels and radio to respond, so when something doesn’t end up working, they can use it as an excuse to defend their lack of action. I saw this happening with Lainey Wilson right before our eyes: numerous folks told me that when Wilson didn’t have a number one hit directly after “Watermelon Moonshine,” decision-makers in places to platform women were already using this as an excuse to demonstrate “cooling.” Yes, the massive star Lainey Wilson even your grandmother knows about. This is how high the bar for women actually is. 

This is the time for labels, radio and promoters to push other women’s voices in the genre - women who Langely is platforming herself on tour. Her album is co-produced by Miranda Lambert, her tour roster includes artists like newsletter favs Kaitlin Butts and Laci Kaye Booth. She'd doing and done her job. The work now is to point the fingers back to Music Row and radio. Clearly the sound of a woman’s voice isn’t as repulsive to listeners as the radio testers claim it is, no? And clearly women like Langley don't only need a man to score a number one hit.

It’s bigger than just this song, too. “Last year Megan Moroney sold more tickets in DC than Keith Urban and Old Dominion combined,” a radio programmer tells me. “And Lainey Wilson was the only country act to sell out at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Kelsea Ballerini sold out Capital One Arena in DC last February.  The women of country are killing it even without radio support. There’s passion with the fans.” The proof is right there:  women make great music and are a financial good bet, too. And yet we still only let one or two exist on country radio at any given time.

The parallel story to all of this is that more women I can count have been dropped from their labels or negotiated a release because being on a major no longer served them (i.e., they couldn’t get a promotional budget that matched the dudes). Tiera, Jordyn Shellhart, Madeline Edwards, Brittney Spencer, Tenille Townes (yes, many of these are also Black women) and a handful of others are all on their own now. Langley is still the only solo woman on the Mediabase top 20 country songs right now!

"Ella Langley simultaneously topping the Hot 100, Hot Country, and Airplay charts is a remarkable feat for any country artist," Dr. Jada Watson tells me. "A Hot 100 crossover signals true cultural reach – radio, streaming, and sales moving together. But let’s not confuse an exception with progress: in an industry where women received less than 9% of total radio spins over the last two years, sustained support remains scarce. Her success is undeniable; but it lays bare the practices of an industry that decides how many women are allowed to exist at once."

I was reminded over the weekend of a conversation I had with Josh Abbott - hope you don’t mind me mentioning this here, Josh, but it’s to give credit where credit is due (Abbott was on the Kacey Musgraves tip long before Music Row, and has also sung a duet with Carly Pearce, among others. Dude has taste)! It was back in 2022, and we were talking about new music, specifically new music from women, and he mentioned Catie Offerman, Harper O'Neill and, yes, Ella Langley. "I think they are talented enough to shine bright and stand out," he told me. And he was right. They are. But while Langley is exploding, the other two are not. Not for lack of talent, but because the industry is still broken. Langley is defying expectations - but now is the time for the industry she exists in to break them apart so others can succeed, too. The proof is right there, I can tell, by the way...