Ella Langley Closes In on the Longest No.1 in Hot 100 History

The week of September 7–13, 2026 belonged to a record that will not move. Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas took a 21st week at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, which makes it the longest-running non-holiday chart-topper the Hot 100 has ever had and puts it one week from the all-time record. Only All I Want for Christmas Is You has spent longer at the top, and Mariah Carey needed three decades of Decembers to get there.

This site normally spends its weeks somewhere else entirely, widening a catalog of songs whose chart runs ended before most of the current top ten existed. Not this week. The song holding America has been at No.1 since July 4, and the one that just took Britain belongs to an artist whose story we already told. The contrast collapsed, so we will say so rather than manufacture one.

The charts

United States. Langley’s run is now a record chase rather than a chart position. Twenty-one non-consecutive weeks, spread across February, March, April, May and an unbroken stretch from July 4 through September 12, and the only song ahead of it in Hot 100 history is a Christmas single that has had thirty years of seasonal help. Behind her the top ten barely moved: Stella Lefty held at two, Taylor Swift at three, Ariana Grande up to four, Dracula locked at six and So Easy at seven. Bruno Mars returned to the top ten. Swift’s year has its own record in it — her 15th Hot 100 No.1 earlier in 2026 gave her the most chart-toppers of any artist this century.

Europe. Britain did something America could not: it knocked Langley off. Sienna Spiro’s Great Expectation went back to No.1 on the Official Singles Chart in its tenth week, pushing Choosin’ Texas to two after 36 weeks on the chart — fifteen weeks longer than the American run, for a record that has never topped it there. Hugel, Imael Angel and Ultra Naté held third with Movin’ to the Sun, Stella Lefty’s Boston sat fourth, and Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In climbed back to five in its 65th week. Four of the British top five have been on the chart for more than three months.

This week in music

AC/DC cancelled their September 16 show at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium after a September 2 storm collapsed seating sections; refunds are automatic and the venue’s season ended four days early *** Robert Plant released Two Coats on September 10, a traditional song he has played live with Saving Grace since 2019, ahead of the All That Glitters… EP on October 9 *** Plant receives the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ryman in Nashville on September 16, with his US tour opening two days later *** Jamiroquai began a Latin American tour on September 11, timed to the 30th anniversary of Virtual Insanity *** The RIAA, A2IM and IMPALA are pushing streaming platforms to adopt standardized AI labeling, with recordings marked AI-generated or AI-assisted depending on whether a human performed lead vocal and primary instruments *** Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson’s Freaks on Parade tour continued through its final week, closing September 20.

The people

September 12 carried an unusual weight this year. Barry White was born on that date in 1944 and died on July 4, 2003 — the same calendar date, twenty-nine years later, that he had married Glodean. Neil Peart was born September 12, 1952, and died January 7, 2020; he was twenty days past his twentieth birthday when he played his first show with Rush, in a school gymnasium outside Copenhagen, where the promoter introduced him as Robert Plat’s bandmate and got his own name wrong too. Gerry Beckley of America shares that exact birthdate, September 12, 1952, and turned 74 — he met Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek at an American school in Hertfordshire, which is where the band’s name came from. And Kelsea Ballerini turned 33 on the same day, born September 12, 1993 in Mascot, Tennessee.

New at Music Videos Club

Six stories this week, and most of them are about records that failed first. Billy Idol – Dancing With Myself was released three separate times across two countries and flopped on every attempt before a horror director put him on a rooftop. Nazareth – Love Hurts reached No.41 in Britain and stopped, then became the biggest-selling single in Norwegian history. Aphrodite’s Child – Rain and Tears was a record-company commission handed to three Greek musicians stranded in Paris in May 1968, built on a melody written around 1690.

The other three are about the opposite problem. Thompson Twins – Hold Me Now was written in half an hour after an argument and produced by the singer himself, because Alex Sadkin was in Australia finishing a Duran Duran album. Kelsea Ballerini – Peter Pan sat on an album for ten months and then made her the first woman to send her first three singles to No.1 on Country Airplay. And Robert Plant – Two Coats is the week’s newest record and its oldest song at once. That is the story behind the song, which is the only thing this site does.