Ella Langley – Choosin’ Texas

It has now spent sixteen weeks at No.1 — long enough to pass Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and to become the third-longest-running chart-topper in the history of the Hot 100.

When “Choosin’ Texas” first reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2026, Ella Langley called it insane. She had no idea. Half a year later, the song is still sitting at the top — and it has quietly rewritten the record books on its way. As of early August 2026, it had spent sixteen nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1, making it the longest-running chart-topper by a solo woman this century and one of only a handful of songs in the chart’s entire 68-year history to lead for that long.

Keep watching: =Ella Langley – Be Her →

The scale of it is hard to overstate. At sixteen weeks, “Choosin’ Texas” is tied with Luke Combs producer-era touchstones and pop monuments alike — Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito,” and Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” — for the third-longest reign in Hot 100 history, trailing only “Old Town Road” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Along the way it passed the fourteen-week runs of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” to become the longest-running No. 1 by a woman, non-holiday, in the modern era. On the August 8 chart it did something no one had ever seen: country songs held the entire top five of the Hot 100 for the first time in history, with Langley’s ballad at the summit.

The song itself is a small, sharp piece of heartbreak. Written by Langley with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert, and Joybeth Taylor, and produced by Langley with Lambert and Ben West, it tells the story of a woman who realizes the man beside her is never going to leave his home state — or the person he left there — behind. Recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville and released on October 17, 2025, as the lead single from her second album Dandelion, it turned a specific, regional ache into something the whole country pulled to the top of the charts and kept there.

A mini-movie in Fort Worth

The official video only deepened the song’s reach. Filmed at the Stagecoach Ballroom in Fort Worth, it plays like a short film, starring Yellowstone actor Luke Grimes as the man who can’t quit Texas and Ava Phillippe as the ex who pulls him back, with Miranda Lambert appearing as the knowing bar singer and Kaitlin Butts as the friend who sees the heartbreak coming. Langley filled the rest of the cast with Texas-born musicians and friends, turning the clip into a celebration of the state the song is named for. It made “Choosin’ Texas” the only song by a woman in country music to top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts at the same time — and, sixteen weeks in, a genuine piece of chart history still being written week by week.