FEATURE: Spotlight: Ella Langley — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Caylee Robillard for Rolling Stone

Ella Langley

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I do wonder whether…

PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Ryan Anderson for Billboard

the incredible Ella Langley will tour in the U.K. at some point. She has a huge run of U.S. dates, ahead. The Alabama-born Country singer-songwriter is known for her candid storytelling and Rock-infused Country sound. Langley has been based in Nashville since 2019. Her phenomenal new album, Dandelion, was released this month. I am going to end with a couple of reviews for this incredible album. I am going to start out with some interviews. Billboard spent some time with an artist who is shouting out women in Country. How they are taking over. The massive success of her single, Choosin’ Texas, breaking records “Billboard's Women In Music Powerhouse has her sights set on Saturday Night Live and stadium sellouts”:

“This record feels like a more mature version of my artistry,” she says. “I was walking into every [writing session] with vision boards and a 100-song reference playlist. A lot of Johnny Lee, Ronnie Milsap references. Think summer nights, fireflies, a bonfire lit. I love to dance. I grew up dancing, so I wanted something where, when I listen to songs, I listen to the instrumentation.”

Langley will bring those songs to life with her trademark rock star swagger and Stevie Nicks-meets-Jessi Colter style when she embarks on an arena tour behind the album in May — just part of a busy 2026 itinerary that also includes opening shows for Morgan Wallen and Eric Church.

Who do you think of when you think of a powerhouse artist?

Dolly Parton. She acts, sings, and every day she leaves the house looking incredible. I aspire to try; I’m in sweats most of the time. Miranda [Lambert], Reba [McEntire], Jo Dee Messina, Gretchen Wilson, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett. What I’m drawn to with strong women is their ability to be trailblazers. They’re not afraid to take risks. Just explore your artistry and have fun with it.

How have you dealt with your newfound fame?

I’m still figuring it out. I graduated [high school] with 32 kids [in my class] and I guess that benefited me, mainly because everyone is famous in a small town. It’s odd to view yourself like that. When I think of another artist, I view them as an artist. But when I view myself, it’s weird to think so many people out there that know me, that I don’t know them. But the fan experiences I’ve had — people come up and talk about what the music means — have been cool.

What is on your career bucket list right now?

[Saturday Night Live] — to be a musical guest and then one day, maybe host. Sell out stadiums, that’s always been my goal. I want to start acting in the next year. I like thrillers but also love comedy. I’m not a big romantic movie lady, so probably something funnier or a little more intense.

“Choosin’ Texas” made history at No. 1 on the Hot 100 at the same time that Megan Moroney’s Cloud 9 debuted atop the Billboard 200. How do you think these simultaneous milestones might affect other women country artists who are trying to break through?

Seeing women at the top of the charts together is incredible. It’s a testament to the stories we’re telling and how they’re resonating with fans. I do hope it keeps opening doors for female artists in the future who’ve been waiting for their turn.

Do you feel a responsibility to mentor other women artists who are coming up?

Absolutely, and there’s so many talented women coming up right now. I’m so excited for what music’s going to look like in the next two to three years. Women are about to take over, I’m telling you that right now. It’s cool to be, hopefully, someone that someone else looks up to in that way”.

I am moving on to an interview from Rolling Stone. Rather than this being an artist with an ego or feeling the need to be hyper all the time, Ella Langley seems much more chilled out and modest. Grounded and instantly relatable, this is someone who will make music history time and time again and go down as one of the greatest Country artists ever:

“Whatever inspires Langley’s easygoing brand of country music, it’s working. Earlier this year, she made history when “Choosin’ Texas” hit Number One on Billboard’ s Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts at the same time. Morgan Wallen, Post Malone, and Shaboozey are the only other artists to ever achieve the feat; Langley is the first woman. To date, “Choosin’ Texas” has spent five nonconsecutive weeks atop the Hot 100. When she conceived the song, with country star Miranda Lambert and the songwriters Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor, Langley says she was thinking about a tall tale she had heard involving Lambert, a kangaroo, and a traffic stop.

“We were at this writers retreat, and I just asked her,” Langley says, laughing. “She had a dog in the back and a kangaroo in the passenger seat, and got pulled over. I said randomly, ‘I’m sure [the police officer] was like, She’s from Texas, I can tell.’”

That line ended up becoming the hook of “Choosin’ Texas,” the song that knocked Harry Styles’ “Aperture” out of the top spot and catapulted Langley into the mainstream. She says its theme of unrequited love — a cowboy returns to his cherished Lone Star State, leaving Langley alone at a bar sipping Jack Daniel’s — is universal. “Everyone can relate to wanting something that doesn’t want you back, whether it be a relationship or a job,” she says. “I’m giving my heart to people a lot. And that’s scary to constantly do, because no one wants their heart broken.”

‘She lives life in a big way’

Langley reunited with Lambert when it came time to record Dandelion. They sing together on “Butterfly Season,” and Lambert co-produced the album with Langley and Ben West. The women have a bond forged before they ever met at that writers camp. When Langley was only a teenager, her family suffered a serious financial crisis, and she took solace in “The House That Built Me,” Lambert’s hit ballad about returning to where you were raised many years later. “We lost our house to the bank the day after my 14th birthday,” Langley recalls. “I heard that song for the first time around then. I was like, ‘Whoa, she’s singing about my life.’”

“Ella has a fiery spirit,” Lambert says. “She lives life in a big way and on her own terms. With this record, I wanted to honor her vision every step of the way.… It felt important to help her make choices that stayed true to who she is as an artist.”

Dandelion also includes a nod to another strong-willed woman from country music’s past: a faithful cover of Kitty Wells’ 1952 track “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” the first song by a solo woman to ever top the country charts. Langley loves the song and its message of empowerment so much that she uses it as the alarm on her smart speaker at home. “She had some balls on her, you know?” Langley says.

This spring and summer, Langley will play stadiums with Wallen and perform at festivals in California and Kentucky; in May, she’ll kick off her headlining Dandelion tour. “Putting on the live show has been the number-one dream for me,” she says.

Thanks to “Choosin’ Texas,” she’s also become a Number One pop songwriter, which makes perfect sense when you consider the full range of her listening tastes. “My biggest influence was Stevie Nicks, and the symbolism in songs,” Langley says. “Sometimes I’ll put in words like ‘Drinking Jack all by myself.’ That can mean a lot of things. Yes, literally, I’m sitting here drinking Jack, but what it’s also saying is ‘He’s gone!”.

Dandelion is undoubtably one of the best albums from this year. It is a masterpiece. I want to lead with a five-star review from Independent. Anyone who does not know about Ella Langley or is new to her work really needs to investigate her and listen to the magnificent Dandelion:

“In February, Ella Langley became the first woman ever to simultaneously top the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts with her tangy, twangy country rock single “Choosin’ Texas”. It’s the mainstream success that the 26-year-old Alabamian farm girl’s been chasing all her life. “Did anything and everything to get where I’m at, and damn if it don’t feel good!” she sings on her second album, Dandelion. But later on the same song, “Somethin’ Simple”, she concedes that while “living the dream” she still cherishes the basics: “A house on the hill, horse in the yard, a dog at my feet, pickin’ my guitar, supper on the stove, hard-workin’ man taking off his dirty work clothes…”

So – although Langley first found fame singing covers on TikTok – there’s no reinventing the wagon wheel on this rich and accomplished record. There’s a classic feel to her assured blend of polished Nashville radio sounds, rootsier strumming, barbecue soul and 1970s rock arrangements (complete with the odd swirl of strings and hand claps). Langley’s a confident old-school songwriter with a great, straight-shootin’ voice: it recalls peak Shania Twain in an ability to bounce from fun to heartbreak, pure notes with a dusty little husk. When Langley saddles up, she takes a song by its reins. In recent interviews, she’s said she fought her label hard to keep the spoken sections they hated on the Riley Green duet “You Look Like You Love Me” – which turned out to be the breakthrough single from her 2024 debut album, Hungover. “If I go in and cut something, it's because I believe in it,” she said. And these 15 new songs are delivered with the head-held-high spirit of a woman who’s just shown The Man that her instincts are right.

Dandelion nails its colours to a traditionalist mast with bookending snatches of the old folk tune “Froggy Went a Courtin’” (which she used to sing with her paternal grandfather) and a swaggeringly good cover of Kitty Wells’s feminist country classic “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”. Dandelion’s title song is a brand statement in which Langley sings over a mellow sway of pedal steel and thumped drums that she’ll always have “The Bible in my blood, and the ’Bama in my veins”.

Langley’s love songs find her yearning for cowboys to love her “from the bottom of your boots to the top of your hat”. On the mellow, organ-backed “Me and You Time” she just wants a break from her busy schedule. “Gotta Quit” is a line dance bop that sees her trying to shake the memory of “that night on your grandpa’s farm – scram!” When she’s unlucky in love, as on the Miranda Lambert co-write “Choosin’ Texas” (with its Eaglesesque highway guitars and flecks of mandolin) she’s always reaching for a glass of “Jack”. If you made a drinking game of taking a shot every time she mentions her favourite whiskey, then you’d be loaded by the end. Although on the breezy “Be Her” she also longs to be the kind of woman who “drinks wine by the glass, not by the bottle”.

Her work leans so heavily on the standard barroom furniture of the genre that, on the page at least, it seems formulaic. It’s Langley’s assured craftswomanship and intentional delivery that keep her from slipping into cliche. Even when it’s “Last Call for Us”, Langley’s still standing. This is a solid, saloon-door-slammer of a country classic”.

I am ending with a positive review from NME. The incredible Ella Langley is an artist that needs to be known by everyone. I do really hope that she comes and plays in the U.K. She is going to headline huge festivals very soon. I wonder if she has dreams of sharing the stage with music legends. One of the greatest songwriters of her generation. Dandelion is an unforgettable album:

“In case you’d missed the memo, country music is having a moment. In the past two years, massive popstars like Beyoncé and Post Malone have spurred the movement internationally, eschewing their established sounds to commercial success, so much so that country music’s share of the UK singles market has doubled, reflecting a growing enthusiasm for all things Americana.

As Ella Langley releases her second album, ‘Dandelion’, she’s sitting pretty on the top of the Billboard Hot 100 courtesy of the album’s lead single, ‘Choosin’ Texas’. Sprouting from the sweet spot between country and pop that has struck a chord with die-hard fans and casual listeners alike, the song captures the pang of rejection from a lover “two steppin’” from life with her in Tennessee to put stakes on a girl from the “Lone Star state” over the twang of bittersweet guitar and a toe-tapping beat.

While Langley herself can’t figure exactly why this particular ode to star-crossed love has connected with fans in such a powerful way, there is a warming, Shania Twain-like charm to her storytelling that both empathises with and bolsters the young women in her audience. Take, for example, the ache of forbidden dalliances on the lovelorn ‘Low Lights’, wistful connections not made to last with the inevitable doom of ‘We Know Us’ and the tender resignation of ‘Last Call For Us’.

However, taking the loss on matters of the heart meanders between tales of Langley brushing herself off and ploughing forth anew, as she flits between possibilities as a career-driven go-getter and the small-town life she left behind. “When days are long, I drift away / I play the song I used to play,” she sings of the memories that keep her grounded on the comforting expanse of ‘Loving Life Again’; meanwhile the easy-breezy ‘Somethin’ Simple’ recounts her bewilderment at her high-flying dreams becoming reality, and the soft-life yearnings that have replaced them.

There is a poignant question mark around the 26-year-old as she attempts to pin down who she is now, following the two years since her debut album ‘Hungover’ and the extensive touring that followed. The infectious hooks of ‘Be Her’ quip Langley’s introspective frustration of wanting to be the self-composed independent woman who invokes respect – not that she’s not striving in the right direction on the Miranda Lambert duet ‘Butterfly Season’: “Don’t even know her, that girl from last October. / Right now I’d like to show her who we’ve turned into.”

Despite recurring allusions to spreading her wings, starry-eyed title track ‘Dandelion’ courts the realisation that, no matter how far her career takes her from home, she is proud of and will never escape her roots. “Bible in my blood and ‘Bama in my veins,” Langley says, while quipping how no amount of fame can make her switch Jack for champagne. Because, if we’re being honest, her wildcard authenticity and fiery free spirit is the reason all eyes are on her now”.

You may not know much about Ella Langley. That will all change. Perhaps more celebrated and spotlighted in the U.S., there are publications and sites here in the U.K. celebrating her work and highlighting her brilliance. Ella Langley will one day be seen as one of…