{"id":516551,"date":"2026-03-05T19:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/516551\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T19:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:20:08","slug":"between-megan-moroney-and-ella-langley-country-women-rule-the-charts-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/516551\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Megan Moroney and Ella Langley, country women rule the charts : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772738408_872_.jpeg\" data-template=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/5750x4313+0+0\/resize\/{width}\/quality\/{quality}\/format\/{format}\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa5%2F2b%2Fe100d48e4218930288af1be477dc%2Fvertical-dip-5.jpg\" class=\"img\" alt=\"Megan Moroney (left) and Ella Langley.\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n                Megan Moroney (left) and Ella Langley.<\/p>\n<p>                    Photo by: Todd Owyoung\/NBC via Getty Images; Photo by Jason Kempin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>                hide caption\n            <\/p>\n<p>            toggle caption<\/p>\n<p>        Photo by: Todd Owyoung\/NBC via Getty Images; Photo by Jason Kempin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>At No. 1 on the albums chart: country star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/1219281019\/megan-moroney\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Megan Moroney<\/a>, who debuts on top with Cloud 9. At No. 1 on the singles chart: an even more newly minted country star in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/g-s1-109803\/ella-langley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ella Langley<\/a>, whose &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; returns to the top spot after a week away. It&#8217;s a big week for women in country music \u2014 and, it turns out, for women whose songs are favored by women in figure skating.<\/p>\n<p>   TOP STORY   <\/p>\n<p>On the Billboard charts, as in life, not all milestones are created equal. Still, something happened this week that has never happened before: This is the first time women known primarily for country music have topped the Hot 100 singles chart and the Billboard 200 albums chart at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>On the Billboard 200, Megan Moroney lands her first-ever No. 1 album with Cloud 9. Buoyed, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/120581188\/taylor-swift\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Taylor Swift<\/a>-style, by a plethora of Target exclusives \u2014 with multiple different editions available for sale on vinyl and CD \u2014 Cloud 9 moved a whopping 78,000 copies, while also scoring enough online listeners to land her at No. 2 on the streaming chart. It&#8217;s a big jump for the singer, whose previous album (2024&#8217;s Am I Okay?) peaked at No. 9.<\/p>\n<p>On the Hot 100, Ella Langley returns to No. 1 with her durable smash &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas.&#8221; In the process, she displaces a former country singer in Swift, whose &#8220;Opalite&#8221; crashed the top spot last week due to a flood of physical copies sold via the singer&#8217;s website. But Swift slips to No. 4 this time around, ceding chart real estate to not only Langley, but also two of the biggest hits of the past year: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/g-s1-90673\/olivia-dean\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Olivia Dean<\/a>&#8216;s &#8220;Man I Need,&#8221; which climbs to No. 2, and\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/g-s1-60448\/alex-warren\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Alex Warren<\/a>&#8216;s tragically unkillable &#8220;Ordinary&#8221; at No. 3.<\/p>\n<p>   TOP ALBUMS   <\/p>\n<p>Megan Moroney displaces <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/656561349\/bad-bunny\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bad Bunny<\/a>&#8216;s DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS, but it&#8217;s also a big week for a pair of artists who haven&#8217;t visited the top 10 in quite a few years.<\/p>\n<p>Debuting at No. 3, the artist immortalized a quarter-century ago with a star turn as Lizzie McGuire debuts with her first album in more than a decade. Titled luck\u2026 or something, the new record gives <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/02\/27\/nx-s1-5619268\/hilary-duff-explores-the-highs-and-lows-of-a-sturdy-home-life-on-new-album\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hilary Duff<\/a> her highest-charting record since 2007, thanks in part to a boost via a Walmart-exclusive edition. (With Moroney&#8217;s chart boom accompanying a huge assist from Target, who says big-box stores aren&#8217;t what they used to be?)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/101141614\/mumford-and-sons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mumford &amp; Sons<\/a> last hit the top 10 in 2018, with the chart-topping Delta, but the folk-rock group&#8217;s long-awaited follow-up released last year (Rushmere) peaked at No. 19. Still, a new album called Prizefighter fares noticeably better, chart-wise, debuting on this week&#8217;s Billboard 200 at No. 10.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s one other top 10 debut this week, as rapper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/780443851\/baby-keem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Baby Keem<\/a> \u2014 cousin and frequent collaborator of one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/166009689\/kendrick-lamar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kendrick Lamar<\/a> \u2014 scores his highest-charting album to date as Ca$ino debuts at No. 4. (Read more about the album <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/02\/26\/nx-s1-5724242\/baby-keems-casino-pglang-review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here<\/a>.) Unlike the albums by Duff and Mumford &amp; Sons, the bulk of Ca$ino&#8217;s numbers were driven by streaming rather than sales, which is good news for its future chart prospects.<\/p>\n<p>   TOP SONGS   <\/p>\n<p>Beyond the rise of Ella Langley and the fall (however temporary) of Taylor Swift, there isn&#8217;t much to report in the top 10 of this week&#8217;s Hot 100. Bad Bunny&#8217;s many hits are starting to slide as his Super Bowl halftime show fades from the rear-view mirror, but that&#8217;s to be expected.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there&#8217;s one other sports-adjacent chart success worth noting this week.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest breakout stars of this year&#8217;s Winter Olympics was U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu, who won gold in the women&#8217;s singles event \u2014 and did so with a combination of athleticism, artistry, flair and great hair. Shortly after winning, Liu participated in the noncompetitive Olympic figure-skating gala, where she performed a show-stopping and widely seen routine to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/artists\/1032818465\/pinkpantheress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">PinkPantheress<\/a>&#8216; &#8220;Stateside (feat. Zara Larsson),&#8221; a remix of a song from last year&#8217;s Fancy That. In fact, Liu even wore an outfit inspired by PinkPantheress&#8217; dress from the song&#8217;s video.<\/p>\n<p>This week, PinkPantheress and Larsson take a huge leap up the charts, as &#8220;Stateside&#8221; bounds from No. 41 to No. 13, while Fancy That jumps more than 100 spots to No. 57 on this week&#8217;s Billboard 200. The song&#8217;s rise just happens to coincide with Liu&#8217;s &#8220;Stateside&#8221; skate \u2014 a sign, if one was needed, that there&#8217;s more than one way to transform a song from a sleeper to a full-fledged smash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Megan Moroney (left) and Ella Langley. Photo by: Todd Owyoung\/NBC via Getty Images; Photo by Jason Kempin\/Getty Images&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-516551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}