Dolly Parton’s Catalog Came Roaring Back While Ella Langley Broke a Record Sixty-Eight Years in the Making
The week of August 31 to September 6, 2026 collapsed the usual distance between the current charts and the deep catalog. A country single set an all-time Hot 100 record, and directly beneath it five recordings between forty-five and fifty-two years old climbed back onto the same chart. For once the archive and the front page were the same page.
The charts
Billboard announced on August 31 that Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” had logged a twentieth week at No. 1 on the Hot 100, making it the sole longest-leading non-holiday hit in the chart’s history. It passed “Old Town Road” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which it had been tied with at nineteen the week before, and it became only the second title in sixty-eight years to lead for twenty weeks or more. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” remains ahead at twenty-two. Stella Lefty’s “Boston” held No. 2 and Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” No. 3.
Underneath that, Dolly Parton returned to the Hot 100 with five recordings, a week after her death on August 25 and despite the tracking period having only two and a half days left in it when the news broke. “Jolene” re-entered at No. 16, a new peak fifty-two years after it stalled at No. 60; “9 to 5” at No. 18; “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers at No. 26; “Here You Come Again” at No. 44. Her original 1974 recording of “I Will Always Love You” debuted at No. 27, having never appeared on the chart in fifty-two years of existence. Six of her titles re-entered Hot Country Songs, with “Jolene” and “9 to 5” back inside the top 10 at Nos. 7 and 8. She also took her first week at No. 1 on the Hot 100 Songwriters chart, displacing Langley, who had held it without a break since mid-April.
Enhypen debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with the EP The Sin: Bliss, moving 98,000 units, 92,000 of them pure album sales. Langley’s Dandelion climbed three places to No. 2 in its twentieth week on the chart, giving her the No. 1 single and the No. 2 album at the same time. Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love held No. 3 and Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem No. 4. The greatest-hits collection Ultimate Dolly Parton re-entered at No. 5, her fourth top 10 album and the second-highest placing of her career. Rod Wave’s Don’t Look Down was confirmed for the following week’s No. 1 with 99,000.
Britain produced the week’s neatest symmetry. “Choosin’ Texas” reached No. 1 on the Official Singles Chart published September 4, an eight-month climb from a No. 78 debut in January, and it ended the run of Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s “Rein Me In” — a single that had just set a UK record of twenty-three non-consecutive weeks at the top and had held ten straight. Parton placed three songs in the top 10 at once for the first time: “9 to 5” at No. 5, her highest UK chart position in a fifty-year career, with “Jolene” at No. 6 and “Islands in the Stream” at No. 9. That “9 to 5” figure carries an oddity worth pausing on. The record never reached the British top 40 at all when Parton released it in 1980.
She came close to more than that. The midweek update on August 30 had “9 to 5” tracking toward No. 1 with “Jolene” at No. 2, which would have handed Parton the first British chart-topper of her life. Friday’s chart didn’t deliver it. On the Official Singles Sales Chart she fared better still, taking five of the top eight, with Tom Jones entering at No. 5 with his reading of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.” Alex Warren entered the albums chart at No. 1 with Wildchild, the Courteeners followed at No. 2, and Michael Jackson’s The Essential sat at No. 3 in its 274th week on the chart.
Two more British charts are worth naming. The Warning took No. 1 on the Rock & Metal Albums Chart with Everything’s Falling, the same week they made history on American rock radio. And the Rock & Metal Singles Chart read like a bulletin from 1998: the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” at No. 1, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” at No. 2, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” at No. 3, Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” at No. 4 and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” at No. 5. Not one of those records is younger than twenty years.
Globally, Shakira and Burna Boy held “Dai Dai” at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 for a seventh week and atop Global Excl. U.S. for a tenth.
This week in music
The Warning reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with “Kerosene,” the first Mexican act and the first all-women band to do so in the chart’s forty-five years.
Liam and Noel Gallagher appeared together at the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of the Oasis documentary, their first joint public appearance away from the reunion tour. The film drew an eight-minute standing ovation.
Alex Van Halen was appointed a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Micky Dolenz, the last surviving Monkee, marked the group’s sixtieth anniversary with a six-song EP of material by Paul Westerberg, Andy Partridge and Adam Schlesinger.
The Prince estate released a collection of ten previously unheard recordings spanning 1977 to 2016, as argument continues over how the vault should be handled.
System of a Down put “Johnny” on streaming services for the first time, marking twenty-five years of Toxicity.
Beyoncé’s B’Day received an expanded twentieth-anniversary edition.
Pulp played what Jarvis Cocker called their last concert for a while at End of the Road, including the live debut of “Deep Fried in Kelvin.”
iHeartRadio switched four station formats to all-Parton programming and launched a memorial playlist, which accounts for much of the airplay behind her chart return.
California lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 931, which would designate September 25 as Dolly Parton Day.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released Tim Curry’s cause of death as coronary artery disease, with a history of stroke and kidney cancer as contributing factors. He died August 25 at 80.
The people
Cassandra Wilson died on September 2 at the age of 70. The Jackson, Mississippi singer won two Grammy Awards and spent a long career refusing to stay inside jazz, folding blues, folk and pop standards into a contralto nobody has ever successfully imitated.
Miguel Zavaleta, the Argentine songwriter behind Suéter, died on August 31 at 71.
Lionel Richie was hospitalized after his August 29 concert in St. Louis, having needed to sit down during the closing number. A source close to the tour said he was doing all right.
Two tributes are worth recording. Ella Langley covered “Jolene” at the Alabama stop of her Dandelion tour. Kacey Musgraves sang “9 to 5” at Madison Square Garden and told the room she was never going to be over losing Dolly Parton.
New at Music Videos Club
Fifteen new stories went up across the week, and five Artist Hubs went live alongside them — the Bee Gees, George Michael, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker and Ella Langley, each with a new tile on the Artists page. Five in one week is the most the site has ever opened at once.
The week ran heavily toward television footage and the stories behind it. Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” from Sydney in 1986 turns on an orchestra that had nothing to play and lit candles instead, which the singer never saw. Queen’s “Now I’m Here” from Munich in February 1979 arrived alongside a rebuilt page for the 1985 Rio performance of the same song, two nights and two arguments now linked to each other. Precious Wilson took a Sam and Dave song onto German television in 1979, and Rory Gallagher played “Wayward Child” on Karussell in 1980.
From the pop and rock catalog came Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling”, whose video hired the director of a 1951 Fred Astaire picture to redo his own trick, plus the Romantics, Europe, Ace of Base, Natalie Imbruglia and Gloria Estefan’s “Mi Tierra”. Dua Lipa’s “Be the One” covers the single that started everything for her.
Country and contemporary pop brought Ella Langley and Riley Green’s “You Look Like You Love Me”, a song nobody planned to play the night they first sang it together and now the only record to win four separate CMA categories, along with Caroline Jones and KAROL G and Bruno Mars.
Three rebuilds are worth naming for reasons outside the site. “9 to 5” was rewritten in the same week the record became the highest-charting UK single of Parton’s life. “Work It Out” was rebuilt as B’Day turned twenty. And Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Nite” now carries the 1995 MTV Unplugged performance, the only footage of the four original members playing in public without the makeup, and Ace Frehley’s death last October has changed what that tape is. Santa Esmeralda, Kim Carnes and two more Lionel Richie pages were also brought up to current structure.
Every one of them is a story about a song, which is the only thing this site has ever been for.
