Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” logged its 14th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this month, tying a chart record long held by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, Variety reported.
The 26-year-old country singer co-wrote the song with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert and Joybeth Taylor for her sophomore album, Dandelion.
“God has been nothing but good to me,” Langley said onstage at this year’s Country Music Association Awards, crediting her Southern Baptist roots for carrying her through a season of doubt. She has spent much of the past year talking about her faith almost as often as she talks about her music.
Movieguide® has been tracking that shift for a while now, most recently in a piece on why the singer can no longer stop bringing up her relationship with Christ. Her habit of thanking Jesus from awards-show stages and concert crowds has made her one of country music’s more unexpected evangelists, which is exactly why her chart-topping run matters to families looking for wholesome voices breaking through on Top 40 radio.
“Choosin’ Texas” first hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 in February and has now matched the 14-week reign of Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Carey’s “We Belong Together.” That ties the longest non-holiday run at No. 1 by a female solo act with no male billing, trailing only Carey’s seven-year, 22-week climb with her Christmas classic, and it pushes Langley past Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women Part I” and Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart,” according to Billboard data.
Related: Is Ella Langley the Wholesome Star We All Wanted?
The song pulled in 24 million official streams and 51 million radio airplay impressions for the week of July 10-16, even as physical sales dipped slightly, according to Billboard’s tally. On the separate Hot Country Songs chart, “Choosin’ Texas” has also outlasted Debby Boone’s decades-old “You Light Up My Life” for the longest run at No. 1 by a woman.
The song’s honky-tonk music video, shot at Fort Worth’s Stagecoach Ballroom, stacks cameos from Miranda Lambert, YELLOWSTONE actor Luke Grimes and a lineup of real-life rodeo stars. It has pulled in millions of views since its April release, and it’s easy to see why fans keep hitting replay.
Langley has been just as candid about the doubts underneath the success and has said the pressure of sudden fame wore on her mentally and emotionally last year, pushing her to step back, go home and pick her Bible back up after years away from it. Reading Scripture daily has, she said, been “the thing that saved my life last year.”
Dandelion, released in April, currently ranks among the year’s two best-selling albums, according to Luminate data, trading the top spot with tour mate Morgan Wallen. Its most personal track, “Speaking Terms,” traces Langley’s wandering relationship with God, the same relationship she keeps testifying to from every stage she’s handed.
None of that makes Langley a Christian artist in the traditional sense, and her catalog still leans on the whiskey-and-heartbreak staples of mainstream country radio. But her willingness to say Jesus’s name in rooms that rarely hear it is the kind of small, imperfect grace Movieguide® likes to point families toward.
With “Choosin’ Texas” still logging weeks at No. 1 and Dandelion holding steady on the album charts, Langley shows no sign of quieting down, about Texas or about her faith.
Read Next: ‘Thank You Jesus’: Country Star Says Relationship With God ‘Has Changed Drastically’
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