Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” spends 24 weeks atop the Hot 100, prompting surprise

KUALA LUMPUR, 30 SEPTEMBER 2026 —

If you’re one of the many people who’ve been expressing their shock the past week or two about Ella Langley ’s “Choosin’ Texas” becoming the longest-reigning Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 of all time, that’s basically understandable.

It would be a bigger-feeling song by a bigger-name superstar artist (or two), it would have all sorts of narrative hooks built into its lyrics, its sound and its backstory, and it would come with an entire promo plan behind it designed to not just make it initially ubiquitous, but continually unignorable. It would seem historic long before it actually became historic.

That’s not “Choosin’ Texas.” It’s not totally not “Choosin’ Texas,” of course — the song is an obvious-sounding hit by a quickly rising star with a number of fascinatingly mid-2020s elements to discuss about it and a handful of pretty big looks culturally. But did it seem historic right off the bat the way that Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s megastar teamup and 16-week No. 1 “One Sweet Day” did?

Or even a tiny bit after the bat, like Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber’s map-expanding 16-week No. 1 “Despacito” did, or Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ culture-shifting 19-week No. 1 “Old Town Road” did? Not particularly. In fact, at numerous points along its chart journey to 24 weeks at No. 1 (as of this week’s Oct. 3-dated chart), “Texas” looked like its momentum was about to run aground.

When it fell from its new Hot 100 peak of No. 11 down to No. 27 last December, buried by the annual avalanche of holiday titles, it looked like it might have missed its chance even to just hit the top 10.

When it rebounded after the holiday rush and reached No. 1 on Feb. 14, it looked to be in a dead heat with Olivia Dean’s similarly long-climbing “Man I Need” — and if it lost out that week, it could’ve gotten boxed out by an imminent Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance and new Taylor Swift video and physical single, which did propel both artists to No. 1 in the weeks to follow.

Then, having already spent 10 combined weeks at No. 1, “Texas” was absent from the top spot from late May all the way through June — replaced by new singles from three of the biggest pop stars in the world, Drake, Ariana Grande and (again) Swift.

Each time, it looked like the end of the “Choosin’ Texas” Hot 100 story — and a logical, not particularly ill-fitting end for a song that could’ve faded away at any of these points and still been looked at as both a major breakthrough hit for Langley and one of the biggest country songs of the past year.

And each time, it came back even stronger — without many obvious pushes from Langley, her team or the larger culture — to the point where it now stands alone, not only in her catalogue and among country crossover hits, but among all 68 years’ worth of Hot 100 history. So how did this happen?

And why has it inspired not just such surprise, but fury among those just learning about “Choosin’ Texas” and its chart dominance these past couple weeks?

The most important thing to understand about “Texas” and its 24-week run at No. 1 is that had it come out two decades earlier — really even one decade earlier — not only would it have no chance of spending that long at No. 1, it likely wouldn’t have sniffed the top spot at all.

That’s not about how the song would have made for a poorer fit in the country landscape of 2005 or 2015 — in truth, the song’s casual timelessness is one of its most endearing and immediately apparent qualities. It’s just about how much the Hot 100, and country’s place within it, has changed over those decades.

First of all, between the time Lonestar’s “Amazed” topped the Hot 100 in 2000 and Morgan Wallen scored his first No. 1 with “Last Night” in 2023, only two country songs (defined as songs eligible for Billboard ’s Hot Country Songs chart) bested the listing — both by Swift, and both with at least one foot already clearly in the pop world.

For the overwhelming majority of the 21st century, the Hot 100’s No. 1 spot has been demonstrably off limits for country artists.

But with the genre finding its foothold in the streaming age of the 2020s, generating massive stars like Wallen and Zach Bryan, and gradually even creeping into top 40 radio — particularly as hip-hop, easily the most dominant genre of streaming’s first decade, has seen its supremacy erode — country’s chart ceiling has risen dramatically.

Now, a staggering 11 of the 32 songs in Billboard history to top both the Hot 100 and Country Songs have done so since 2023, and earlier this year, the chart’s entire top five was stocked with country songs for the first time ever .

But the door suddenly being wide open to country atop the Hot 100 is only one of the two biggest chart transformations to consider when discussing the “Choosin’ Texas” run, and arguably the smaller of the two. The other is that turnover on the chart has slowed massively, particularly in its top tier.