{"id":853085,"date":"2026-09-19T09:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T09:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/853085\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T09:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T09:26:09","slug":"ella-langley-choosin-texas-track-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/853085\/","title":{"rendered":"Ella Langley: \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d Track Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a temptation, in America\u2019s coastal liberal enclaves and especially among our self-styled aesthetes, to separate our culture from their culture. Currently it\u2019s popular to call these silos \u201cAmerica A\u201d and \u201cAmerica B,\u201d but the labels are really just a fresh coat of memetic paint. See: \u201cflyover country,\u201d \u201cthe bubble<\/a>,\u201d \u201c\u2018real\u2019 America.\u201d The latter was a running gag<\/a> on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, where Alec Baldwin\u2019s Reaganite GE exec insisted that Tina Fey\u2019s brand of feminist sketch comedy was fundamentally incompatible with the middle-American mind. You people still buy CDs?!<\/a> Well, The Joe Rogan Experience is the country\u2019s most popular podcast, Donald J. Trump is a two-term president, and a little ditty called \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d is on track to become the longest-running No. 1 hit<\/a> in U.S. chart history. Maybe it\u2019s America B all the way down.<\/p>\n

Our new monocultural attach\u00e9 is the 27-year-old Ella Langley<\/a>. Raised Southern Baptist in rural Alabama, Langley grew up singing hymns around the piano at family reunions. She was already six years into her Nashville career when she put out \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d last October, as the lead single from her second album, Dandelion. Langley wrote and produced \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d alongside a crack team including Miranda Lambert<\/a>, the rare country musician whose acclaim beyond Music City equals, if not exceeds, her respect within it. The song\u2019s ascent commenced in earnest when Lane Gorrell, an Oklahoman farm-fluencer of sorts, posted a TikTok<\/a> dancing to it in front of some cows. His moves are earnest, unselfconscious; the horizon is a straight line; the sky is impossibly blue, a shade of azure that seems to emanate from \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d itself.<\/p>\n

Though Lambert\u2019s signature is unmistakable, \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d does not sound like a Miranda Lambert song. It goes down totally smooth, with nary a speck of the vinyl crackle that coated Lambert\u2019s 2016 breakup opus, The Weight of These Wings<\/a>. Langley is also singing about a breakup, but all the sharp feelings\u2014spite, rage, jealousy\u2014have been sanded down, leaving behind a glancing wistfulness. The language of craftsmanship feels appropriate to discuss country music and \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d specifically. In every filigreed Stratocaster lick, I hear the product of an industry that is dedicated to producing hits, yes, but hits that last. They last because they have to\u2014they\u2019re expected to live in car stereo systems for months, if not years, without losing their luster. Even by those rigorous standards of quality control, \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d is a rare jewel, a family heirloom in the making.<\/p>\n

Chalk that up, in part, to how out-of-time it sounds. The sole means of carbon-dating \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d is by the veritable crate of dusty country 45s Langley packs into its lyrics: Jerry Reed\u2019s \u201cEastbound and Down\u201d (1977), Ronnie Milsap\u2019s \u201cSmoky Mountain Rain\u201d (1980), and George Strait\u2019s \u201cAmarillo by Morning\u201d (1982). She\u2019s a traditionalist consciously situating herself within a tradition; Dandelion opens with a rendition of \u201cFrog Went a-Courtin,\u201d an English folksong that dates back to the 1500s, and features a rollicking cover of Kitty Wells\u2019 1952 country No. 1 (the first by a female solo artist) \u201cIt Wasn\u2019t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.\u201d The plot of \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d follows the broad strokes of Sweet Home Alabama, starring Reese Witherspoon, with some genders and geography swapped. Who was it who said there are only seven stories in the whole world? \u201cChoosin\u2019 Texas\u201d chooses one, tells it new, tells it well.<\/p>\n