Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has reached 22 total weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, tying Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” for the longest cumulative run at the top in the chart’s history.
The country crossover reaches the milestone on the chart dated September 19th, less than 11 months after Langley released it as the lead single from her second album, Dandelion. One additional week at No. 1 would give “Choosin’ Texas” the outright record.
The two 22-week runs could hardly have taken more different routes. Carey’s Christmas standard accumulated its total through repeated holiday returns beginning decades after its original release. Langley’s record has collected all 22 of its No. 1 weeks during the same release cycle, although not consecutively. Pitchfork confirms the tie and the possibility of a record-breaking 23rd week.
For Langley, the milestone turns what began as her first Hot 100 No. 1 into something much larger: the longest-running non-holiday chart-topper Billboard has ever recorded.
Twenty-Two Weeks Changes the Hot 100 Record Book
“Choosin’ Texas” passed a succession of major chart benchmarks on its way to Carey.
At 14 weeks, Langley matched the runs of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Carey’s “We Belong Together.” She moved beyond both the following week, then eventually surpassed the 19-week No. 1 runs of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”
Week 20 made “Choosin’ Texas” the longest-running non-holiday No. 1 in Hot 100 history, Axios Nashville noted September 1st. Two more weeks have now put Carey beside it.
The distinction between the songs matters. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” returns to the market every holiday season as Christmas listening surges, allowing its No. 1 total to accumulate across multiple years. “Choosin’ Texas” has reached 22 weeks before completing its first year of release.
Langley’s run has not been uninterrupted. Other major releases have displaced her at different points since she first reached No. 1 in February, but “Choosin’ Texas” repeatedly returned to the summit. The Washington Post documented that pattern in July after the song had already reclaimed No. 1 multiple times.
Longevity, rather than an unbroken streak, is the record here.
The Song Kept Finding Different Ways Back
Modern Hot 100 dominance rarely comes from one source.
Billboard’s all-genre singles chart combines U.S. streaming activity, radio airplay and sales, allowing the balance supporting a hit to change as its release cycle develops.
Earlier in the run, “Choosin’ Texas” demonstrated that balance clearly. During one March tracking week, the song generated 22.7 million official U.S. streams, reached a radio audience of 44.7 million and sold 6,000 copies, Billboard’s chart data shows.
By July, those figures had grown to 24 million official streams, 51 million radio audience impressions and 7,000 sales during a week tracked by Variety Australia.
That durability helps explain why the record could return after losing No. 1. A song driven primarily by an explosive first-week sales campaign can fall sharply once that event ends. “Choosin’ Texas” developed enough streaming and radio support to remain close to the top and reclaim it.
Country radio was only part of the equation. The song crossed into a broader audience while retaining the musical identity that made it distinctive in the first place.
Its reach also became international. “Choosin’ Texas” climbed to No. 1 on the UK’s Official Singles Chart September 4th, giving Langley her first British chart-topper. Official Charts records a run that began well outside the UK Top 40 before eventually reaching the summit.
A Traditional Country Record Became a Pop Giant
The scale of the Hot 100 run is striking partly because “Choosin’ Texas” does not disguise itself as something other than country music.
Pedal steel remains prominent. Electric and acoustic guitars surround Langley’s vocal, while the rhythm section leaves enough room for the lyric to carry the record rather than pushing it toward a heavily programmed pop arrangement.
The studio personnel reinforce that sound. Spencer Cullum plays steel guitar, Charlie Worsham contributes acoustic guitar, Tom Bukovac handles electric guitar and Miranda Lambert supplies background vocals.
Langley co-wrote the song with Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor and co-produced it with Lambert and Ben West. Official Charts identifies the same writing and production team behind the recording.
The lyric works with similarly traditional economy. Langley realizes that the man she wants has been pulled back toward another woman from Texas, turning a romantic triangle into a rivalry between Tennessee and the Lone Star State.
Country references sit inside the story rather than around it. George Strait, Jerry Reed and Ronnie Milsap songs become clues the narrator should have noticed before the relationship slips away.
That gives “Choosin’ Texas” an unusual position among enormous crossover records. It reached the broadest U.S. singles chart without sanding away the pedal steel, country songwriting references or Langley’s Alabama drawl that identify where the record came from.
Miranda Lambert Helped Build the Record
Lambert’s involvement runs deeper than a background-vocal credit.
The song emerged from an October 2024 writing retreat involving Langley, Lambert, Dick and Taylor. One of Lambert’s stories from her younger years helped spark the central Texas idea and eventually led the writers toward the phrase that became the song’s premise.
Langley later explained that Lambert had once been pulled over while traveling with a dog and a kangaroo, an encounter that somehow worked its way into the writers’ conversation about Texas. People traced the unlikely origin story when Dandelion arrived in April.
The relationship continued across the album. Lambert co-produced Dandelion with Langley and Ben West, while her voice sits behind Langley on “Choosin’ Texas.”
That gives the hit a generational country connection without turning it into a formal duet. Lambert is part of the recording, but Langley’s vocal remains firmly at the center.
The single followed Langley’s 2024 breakthrough “You Look Like You Love Me” with Riley Green, but Dandelion pushed her from a successful country newcomer into an all-genre chart force. The Associated Press described the album as an old-soul country record that draws from traditional influences without treating them as museum pieces.
Country Keeps Rewriting the Pop Chart
Langley’s record joins a remarkable recent stretch for country songs on the Hot 100.
Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus took the country-rap hybrid “Old Town Road” to 19 weeks at No. 1 in 2019. Shaboozey matched that total with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” in 2024, combining country instrumentation with rhythmic DNA drawn partly from hip-hop.
“Choosin’ Texas” has now moved past both.
Musically, Langley’s route is different. The song’s crossover appeal does not depend on a rap feature or an obvious genre-blending concept at the center of the record. Its steel guitar, narrative lyric and Miranda Lambert connection place it firmly inside contemporary country.
The run has produced other chart records along the way. Langley became the first woman to hold Nos. 1 and 2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for multiple weeks, with “Choosin’ Texas” leading “Be Her.” Billboard documented that achievement in March.
Her broader album cycle has kept pace. Langley received nine nominations for the 2026 CMA Awards, with both “Choosin’ Texas” and “Be Her” nominated for Single of the Year. Holler notes that she is the first artist since Lambert in 2010 to place two songs in that category in the same year.
Drake Reworks “Choosin’ Texas” During Its Record Run
Another major artist entered the song’s orbit just as Langley reached Carey’s record.
Drake debuted a reworking featuring Don Toliver in his Fear of Missing Out short film September 15th. Rather than simply adding a guest verse to Langley’s recording, the new track interpolates “Choosin’ Texas” within a different song.
As of September 19th, the Drake and Don Toliver version had not received a conventional standalone release across major streaming services. MusicRadar details the country-inspired material featured in the film.
The complete reworking can currently be heard within Drake’s Fear of Missing Out film, which returned to his official YouTube channel after briefly disappearing following its September 15th premiere.
Whether the reworking receives an official commercial release, and how Billboard would treat any eligible activity if it does, remains unknown.
For now, its existence offers another measure of the original’s reach. A song built around Texas, Tennessee and pedal steel has become culturally large enough for Drake to reconstruct it while it challenges the longest-standing No. 1 benchmark in American singles history.
Week 23 Would Leave Mariah Carey Behind
The next chart creates an unusually simple threshold.
If “Choosin’ Texas” earns another week at No. 1, Langley will reach 23 total weeks and hold the Hot 100 longevity record outright.
Carey’s achievement would remain fundamentally different. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has demonstrated a kind of seasonal durability almost no other modern recording can match, repeatedly returning to No. 1 as Christmas listening resets the market each December.
Langley’s run measures something else: sustained dominance within one active single and album cycle.
Holler’s chart analysis confirms the 22-week tie after tracking Langley’s climb through earlier records held by Houston, Carey, Lil Nas X and Shaboozey.
Those comparisons are finished now. There is no longer another non-holiday No. 1 ahead of “Choosin’ Texas.”
One more week would leave no song ahead of it at all.