Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' Becomes the Longest-Running No. 1 Song in Billboard Hot 100 History

For a 23rd time, Ella Langley's aching, twangy breakup ballad "Choosin' Texas" is sitting at No. 1 on this week's Billboard Hot 100, and with that milestone the song has done something no single has managed since the chart launched in 1958: it is now the longest-running No. 1 in the Hot 100's history, outlasting every pop, rock, hip-hop and country hit that came before it.

The record belonged, until this month, to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You," the 1994 holiday standard that has returned to No. 1 every winter for years and reached a 22nd total week atop the chart last December. Langley's song passed that mark with its 23rd nonconsecutive week at No. 1, a run detailed in Billboard's own chart-history rundown, which also lists the previous holders of the honor: Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" and Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," each with 19 weeks, and a three-way tie at 16 weeks among Morgan Wallen's "Last Night," "Despacito" and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day."

A Two-Year Climb to the Top

"Choosin' Texas" did not arrive as an instant smash. Written in October 2024 and recorded the following year at Nashville's Sound Emporium studio, it entered the Hot 100 on the chart dated Nov. 1, 2025, as the fifth chart entry of Langley's career. It took until January 2026 to crack the top 10, and February to claim its first week at No. 1, before settling into the kind of sustained, algorithm-fed dominance that has made it a fixture on country radio and streaming playlists alike. The song has also logged 18 weeks atop Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart and repeated stints at No. 1 on Country Airplay, a run that ties the longest reign by a solo woman on that radio format in 15 years.

The commercial weight behind those chart runs is considerable. According to certification records searchable through the RIAA's certification database, "Choosin' Texas" has been certified six-times platinum in the United States, denoting six million certified units, with additional platinum certifications in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The song is the lead single from Langley's second studio album, "Dandelion," which itself debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year.

Langley, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Alabama signed to Sony Music Nashville and Columbia Records, whose career and tour dates are chronicled on her official artist site, co-wrote the song with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert and Joybeth Taylor, and co-produced it with Lambert and Ben West. In a Billboard interview marking her as one of the magazine's 2026 Women in Music honorees, Langley described the writing session that produced the song, which grew out of a story Lambert told about once talking her way out of a traffic ticket with a pet kangaroo in the passenger seat.

"I was on a writers retreat with Miranda, our first time writing together. ... She told me how she got pulled over once with the kangaroo in the passenger seat. The kangaroo got her out of a ticket and she said, 'Of course, I had Texas plates, too.' I went, 'Well, she's from Texas, I can tell...' Forty-five minutes later, we had the song written."

Who the Record Touches

The milestone lands most directly on Langley and her Nashville collaborators, but its ripples extend across the music business. For country radio and Nashville songwriters, the run affirms a trend years in the making: streaming has eroded the old wall between "country" and mainstream pop audiences, letting a twangy, radio-built single cross over and out-stream releases from much bigger pop names. For Billboard itself, the record arrives less than a year after the magazine altered its Hot 100 methodology specifically to encourage turnover at the top of the chart, after complaints that a handful of songs — including Teddy Swims's "Lose Control," which spent more than two years on the chart — were clogging the countdown. That "Choosin' Texas" broke the all-time record anyway suggests the stagnation Billboard tried to address reflects genuine, sustained listening habits rather than a quirk of the old rules.

The record also touches Mariah Carey, whose Christmas perennial is likely to return to No. 1 again this winter as it has for years, even though it can no longer reclaim the all-time mark it just lost. And it lands, more broadly, on 2026's pop hitmakers, several of whom have struggled to make the kind of chart dent Langley's song has sustained: new albums this year from Harry Styles, Gracie Abrams and Charli xcx failed to produce the sort of runaway singles that once would have been expected to unseat a country crossover hit within weeks.

Reaction and What Comes Next

NPR's music desk noted this week that four of the Hot 100's top five slots were recently occupied by country or country-adjacent songs, a lineup that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, while Variety framed the record as confirmation that country music, long treated as a genre apart from the pop mainstream, now regularly sets the pace for it. Industry attention has already turned to what might finally end the song's reign: Taylor Swift released a new single, "Patient Zero," the same week the record fell, and further country and pop releases are expected before the end of the year.

For now, "Choosin' Texas" remains at No. 1 on the chart dated Sept. 26, 2026, with no clear challenger positioned to unseat it in the immediate term. Whether the song extends its own record further, or cedes the top spot in the coming weeks as new competition arrives, its two-year run has already reordered the list of the most dominant singles in Hot 100 history — a list that, for the moment, Ella Langley leads alone.

• 23 weeks (and counting) at No. 1: "Choosin' Texas," Ella Langley, 2026
• 22 weeks: "All I Want for Christmas Is You," Mariah Carey, 2019-2025
• 19 weeks apiece: "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," Shaboozey, and "Old Town Road," Lil Nas X feat. Billy Ray Cyrus
• 16 weeks apiece: "Last Night," Morgan Wallen; "Despacito," Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee feat. Justin Bieber; "One Sweet Day," Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men