“Choosin’ Texas,” Ella Langley’s languid heartbreak anthem about losing her cowboy sweetheart to a girl from Texas, which Rolling Stone has declared the song of the summer, is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
It depends on who you ask and, more importantly, what their algorithm serves them up.
The song – cowritten by Miranda Lambert in one mark of Langley’s country bona fides – is an undisputed hit, if charts are how you define such things. It’s spent 15 weeks at Billboard’s No. 1, making Langley just one of three women to earn that honor as solo artists and breaking the records previously held by Whitney Houston for “I Will Always Love You” and Mariah Carey for “We Belong Together.” She’s leading Taylor Swift and Drake in the charts.
So, why does it feel like people don’t know her face or name? Call it the baffling reality of music in 2026.
Since the advent of Napster introduced music streaming to the world, the way people listen to music has fundamentally changed, bringing with it the end of musical monoculture as we know it.
