Ella Langley Just Made Billboard History. Here's Why It Took This Long.
On February 9, 2026, Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That alone would be news. But the 26-year-old from Hope Hull, Alabama, did something no woman had done before: she topped the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts at the same time.
Only three songs in Billboard history had previously pulled off that triple. Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" held all three for seven weeks in 2024. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen's "I Had Some Help" managed it for one week that same year. And Wallen's "Last Night" commanded all three for eight weeks in 2023. Every single one of those songs was by a man.
So the real question here isn't what Ella Langley did. It's why it took until 2026 for a woman in country music to do it.
The numbers tell a bleak story
Since 2000, only 12 women or all-female groups have placed a country song in the Hot 100's top 10. That's 1.7 percent of all top-10 entries this century, according to Billboard's own data. The women who've actually reached No. 1 with a country song form an even smaller list: Carrie Underwood with "Inside Your Heaven" in 2005, Taylor Swift with "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" in 2012 and "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" in 2021, and Beyonce with "Texas Hold 'Em" in 2024.
That's four songs in 26 years. Beyonce's entry comes with an asterisk for the purists who argue about genre boundaries, though Billboard counted it, so we'll count it too. Two more No. 1s featured women: Kacey Musgraves on Zach Bryan's "I Remember Everything" in 2023, and Tate McRae on Morgan Wallen's "What I Want" in 2025. But both were features on songs by male artists.
Langley did it solo. With a song she co-wrote. That distinction matters.
The Miranda Lambert connection
"Choosin' Texas" wasn't written in a boardroom. Langley co-wrote it with Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor, and co-produced it with Ben West. Lambert has been Nashville's most decorated woman of her generation: 14 Academy of Country Music Awards for Female Artist of the Year, three CMA Female Vocalist of the Year trophies, a Grammy. And yet she'd never topped the Hot 100 as a writer or producer until this song.
Let that sink in. Miranda Lambert, who has been making country music for over two decades, needed Ella Langley's song to reach the top of the all-genre chart for the first time. The issue was never talent. It was the machinery around country radio and streaming that has historically filtered women out of the top positions.
When Langley posted on her Instagram Story on February 5, rallying fans for one last iTunes push, she framed it plainly: "Let's do it for women and let's do it for country music." She was at No. 2, sitting behind Harry Styles' "Aperture." Four days later, she had the crown.
From Hope Hull to the Hot 100
Langley's path to this moment reads nothing like a major-label creation story. She grew up in Hope Hull, a community of roughly 3,000 people about 10 miles southwest of Montgomery. Her grandfather played multiple instruments; almost everyone in her family sings. When he died, her father had his guitar restrung for her. She was 14. That night, she looked up the chords to Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" and taught herself to play.
She performed at local Alabama bars and festivals as a teenager, dropped out of Auburn University where she was studying forestry, and moved to Nashville in 2019 at age 20. The timing was terrible. She arrived just before COVID shut down the live music circuit that Nashville newcomers depend on. She pivoted to TikTok and online writers' rounds, signed a publishing deal with Sony Music Publishing Nashville in 2021, and released early singles that got traction on independent country platforms.
Her breakout came with "You Look Like You Love Me," a duet with fellow Alabama artist Riley Green, off her 2024 debut album Hungover. The song earned six ACM Award nominations and won Musical Event of the Year at the CMA Awards. She was named ACM New Female Artist of the Year in May 2025, leading all artists with eight total nominations that cycle.
"Choosin' Texas" dropped in October 2025 as the lead single for her sophomore album, Dandelion, due April 10. In its tracking week ending February 5, the song pulled 22.1 million official streams (up 22% week over week), 34.4 million radio impressions (up 8%), and 12,000 digital sales (up 98%). It became the 1,187th No. 1 in Hot 100 history, and the 31st song to top both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs simultaneously since 1958.
What "crossover" actually means in 2026
The word "crossover" has always been loaded in country music. For decades, it meant abandoning your roots to chase pop audiences, or at least, that's how Nashville framed it when women did it. When men like Morgan Wallen or Post Malone crossed over, the industry called it "expanding the genre." When women like Shania Twain or Taylor Swift did it, it was treated as a departure.
Langley's crossover is different in one way: "Choosin' Texas" doesn't sound like a pop record. It's a country song that crossed over on its own terms through streaming momentum, radio play, and a genuine fan campaign. There's no rap feature, no EDM drop, no genre-blending gimmick. The song's success suggests that the old gatekeeping mechanisms, especially country radio's well-documented reluctance to play women, are losing their stranglehold as streaming reshapes how songs reach audiences.
Country radio still plays roughly 10-15% women, a ratio that has barely budged in a decade despite repeated industry pledges to do better. But streaming doesn't have a program director deciding that three women per hour is "too many." When fans can choose what to play, they choose women more often than country radio ever allowed.
Where this goes
Langley launches The Dandelion Tour on May 7, with dates in Toledo, Savannah, Salem, and beyond. Her sophomore album arrives April 10. If the Hungover-to-Dandelion trajectory holds, from debut to Hot 100 No. 1 in under two years, we're watching one of the fastest ascents in modern country music.
But the bigger story isn't about Ella Langley specifically. It's about what her chart position exposes: country music's most dominant genre trend of the 2020s, country songs topping the all-genre chart, was, until last week, an exclusively male achievement. Langley broke through because streaming gave fans a way around the bottleneck. The question is whether the industry will follow the audience or keep pretending the bottleneck doesn't exist.
You can watch the official lyric video for "Choosin' Texas" here on goat.today.