When country fans hit play to listen to Ella Langley's second album, they heard a song that was nothing like the hit Choosin' Texas. The 26-year-old from Hope Hull, Alabama decided to open up Dandelion with a folk piece that has centuries of history. «Froggy Went a-Courtin' is one of the first two songs I learned to sing, the other is Amazing Grace» he says in a rare moment of pause. «When we all got together as a family, we would sit around the piano and sing Froggy. It's a personal record, this one, in the sense that it tries to make you understand something about me, but also about Alabama, about what it was like to grow up in the countryside with songs like that.”
What you hear at the opening and closing of the album is a fragment of the song that Langley recorded with Charlie Worsham. In between there are country ballads like Be Her, Loving Life Again and the title track that recall the so-called urban cowboy of the 80s rather than the bright and twangy sounds of the 90s that are so fashionable today.
Langley started doing covers in bars when he was just 18 years old. She moved to Nashville in 2019 and broke through five years later, a relatively short stint by city-in-ten standards, with You Look Like You Love Mea mischievous duet with Riley Green, song of the year at the 2025 CMA Awards. The song, which is unconventional as she recites the lyrics instead of singing them, has established her as Nashville's emerging talent. “At first they wanted me to sing,” he says of the record players on his label, Columbia. “They didn't believe it could work that way. But I'm stubborn. Now they no longer question my choices.”
For Aaron Raitiere, co-author of the song together with Langley, the singer-songwriter has something magical and is the perfect testimonial for a «new but timeless country. And she's always calm, cool and easy».
It's actually the feeling he conveys when speaking to us. He talks about his parents and laughs about their love story that brought together the father originally from the deep south of Alabama and the mother who comes from Michigan. He says that the dreamy imagery of Dandelion comes in part from the weed she likes to smoke. «Do you want to know why this record is so colorful? It's because my brain goes fast.”
Whatever the inspiration, his laid-back country works. Earlier this year he made history when Choosin' Texas it went to number one simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay. In the past only Morgan Wallen, Post Malone and Shaboozey had succeeded. Langley is the first woman ever to get there.
In writing the song with Miranda Lambert and co-writers Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor, the singer was inspired by an exaggerated story she had heard featuring Lambert, a kangaroo and a police checkpoint. “We were at this writing retreat and I asked him,” he says, laughing. «She had a dog in the back seat and a kangaroo in the passenger seat, and she was stopped. I said randomly: “I'm sure the policeman thought: obviously he's from Texas, she's from Texas, I can tell».
Photo: Caylee Robillard/The Neal Agency
The phrase then became the refrain of Choosin' Texasthe song that undermined Openings by Harry Styles from #1 in America and launched Langley into the mainstream. The theme of unrequited love with a cowboy who decides to return to his beloved Lone Star State leaving Langley alone in a bar sipping Jack Daniel's is universal. «Everyone can identify with not being reciprocated, whether in a relationship or at work. Continuously giving yourself to others is scary, because no one wants to suffer.”
Lambert sings with Langley in Butterfly Season and co-produced the album with the singer-songwriter and Ben West. The two were somehow connected even before they met. When Langley was a teenager, her family went through a major financial crisis and she found comfort in it The House That Built MeLambert's ballad about returning after a long time to the place where you grew up. «The bank took our house the day after my fourteenth birthday. I heard that song for the first time around that time and thought he was singing about my life.”
“She has a fiery spirit,” Lambert says. «He lives life large and on his own terms. With this album, I wanted to honor her vision… it seemed important to me to help her make choices that were faithful to the artist she is.”
Dandelion also includes a tribute to another country badass, a rather faithful cover of Kitty Wells' 1952 song It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. It was the first song by a solo female to reach number one on the country charts. Langley loves the song and its message of empowerment so much that he uses it as an alarm clock when he's at home. “He had balls.”
This spring and summer Langley will perform at stadiums with Wallen and at festivals in California and Kentucky. He will kick off his headlining tour in May. «Putting on a live show has always been my dream». Thanks to Choosin' Texas she's also become a number one pop songwriter, which makes sense considering the breadth of her musical tastes. “I like symbolism in lyrics,” he says, “and the singer who influenced me the most is Stevie Nicks.”
From Rolling Stone US.
