Choosin’ Texas singer Ella Langley is even more famous after a Billboard charts clash with Taylor Swift

After four decades, everyone knows not to take The Onion seriously. Still the satirical website’s joke headlines often start with a kernel of truth.

On July 29, it published a piece titled “Taylor Swift Sues Ella Langley for Bangs Infringement”. The damages sought was $100. A gag, obviously. And yet, a Pakistani news website thought it was worth debunking.

Despite her girl squad marketing, Swift has a reputation, unfairly or not, for seeing other female artists as professional threats, and has been accused of blocking or knocking down her competitors by timing her releases (and re-releases) to coincide with someone else’s moment to shine.

Olivia Rodrigo even wrote a song that many have interpreted to be about Swift: “Your flowers filled with vitriol, you build me up to watch me fall, you have everything and you still want more”.

So, when Swift announced a few weeks ago that she was releasing an “encore” version of her 2025 album Life of a Showgirl — something she promised she wouldn’t do — the narrative of the why very quickly, swiftly if you will, focused on a name: Ella Langley, she of the aforementioned fringe.

Langley is 27 years old, from the American state of Alabama, and in September, she toppled Mariah Carey’s record of weeks holding the number one spot on the Billboard 100 chart.

Carey’s Christmas anthem All I Want For Christmas spent 22 weeks in the top position. Langley’s hit, Choosin’ Texas, bested that record on September 26 this year and reached 24 weeks.

When the Billboard charts updated overnight, Langley had been knocked off that top perch. By Swift.

Maybe Swift didn’t deliberately time her re-released album, and its four new songs, to end Langley’s hot run (just ask Charli XCX, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus what that feels like), and maybe she merely wanted to remind Grammy voters just before nominations open.

Or, you know, it was, blah blah, for the fans. Just as all 34 variants of Life of a Showgirl (available to buy now!) were also for the fans.

But like Voldemort did to Harry Potter (not that we’re suggesting Swift is akin to He Who Shall Not Be Named), Swift has marked Langley as her equal.

Langley might have been a rising star in the American music industry, you don’t get 24 weeks at number one without truckloads of people listening to your song, but now this tussle with Swift, whether real or not, elevates her cultural cache on a global stage.

Choosin’ Texas is currently the number one song of the Spotify daily Top 50 Australian chart (Swift’s Patient Zero is number three). It’s number two on the Aria singles chart, dethroned this week by Swift.

If Langley didn’t have a massive international presence before this year, it’s partly because her songs are, in a word, pleasant. The Atlantic’s music writer, Spencer Kornhaber, described her sound and presentation as the embodiment of moderation.

It’s as if her songs are soothing, likeable vibes which offer a reprieve during a cultural moment of overstimulation. They’re appealing but not necessarily karaoke belters.

The other reason you may not have heard her music (apparently Doja Cat hadn’t) – or remembered that you’ve listened to it – is that Langley hails from US country music, a genre that has increasingly been embraced as part of the mainstream in the past decade.

But there is a particular unabashed “Americanness” to how the genre is marketed and sold that has limited international cultural sway. If anything, the iconography of American country music — the flag, Christian faith, big pick-up trucks, how white it is despite its artistic roots in Black music — works against it outside of the US.

For Langley to have broken out beyond the institutions of the Grand Ole Opry is notable, even if the way the Billboard charts are now calculated, with streams making up a huge chunk of the composition, has allowed country music to really push through thanks to algorithmic online recommendations.

Choosin’ Texas has been streamed more than a billion times on Spotify, where it can be found on multiple lists.

It may seem like it but Langley didn’t come out of nowhere. Homeschooled until year seven and a two-time state dance champion, she co-wrote her first song as a teenager and released it to YouTube. There were years spent playing bars around Alabama.

After a short spell at university, Langley moved to Nashville, the home of country music, in 2018. There, she linked up with other singers and songwriters, including Riley Green and Elle King. One of her mentors was Miranda Lambert, who would later co-write and co-produce Choosin’ Texas.

Her first studio album, Hungover, was released in 2024 and at least one track off it, You Look Like You Love Me, went viral on TikTok which propelled it to a peak of spot 30 on the Billboard 100. In Australia, the highest it went on the ARIA chart was 67.

Choosin’ Texas, which was released as a single prior to the second album, Dandelion, made Langley the first female artist to simultaneously top the Billboard 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. The album debuted at number one.

She told People magazine in June that she was still “finding my footing in this new life that I have where so many people care about what I’m doing, this was the goal, the whole time, for people to be listening to the music, but now they’re also paying attention to the human version of me, which is interesting”.

Who is the human version of Ella Langley? She has described her music as deeply personal to her, but how much has she really revealed of her interiority?

Choosin’ Texas tells a story from the perspective of the unnamed narrator from Tennessee who realises her Texan partner is leaving her for someone from home. There were online rumours that the real subjects of the story referred to Langley, Green and Megan Maroney, but all three have denied it, and none of them are from the Lone Star state.

Langley said the song came from a story involving Lambert being pulled over by a cop while her pet kangaroo named Olivia Rootin’ John (!!) was in the car, and her Texan licence plates likely got her out of a fine.

She’s been coy about any romantic entanglements, and while has identified herself as Christian, has said almost nothing about politics.

There is online speculation she could be right-wing just because of her genre, but there’s never been more than the one T-shirt she wore in 2020 which featured a checklist image that included Democrat, Republican and Country Music. The tick was next to the latter.

In interviews, she talks about her songs reflecting where she comes from, rather than who she is, trying to evoke the feeling of Alabama for the listener.

Another hit, Be Her, tells the story of a young woman who appears to embody “goodness”, and the singer’s desire to emulate that person.

While Langley’s protagonist might yearn for something homespun, she has greater ambitions. She wants to sell out stadiums and arenas.

On stage two weeks ago in Ohio, she reflected on what it took to get to where she was standing. “That’s the girl that rode in a 15-passenger can night after night after night. She rode in a Honda Accord night after night after night, chased her dream, living on bar food, living on tip jar money”.

She also said she wanted to write outwards, to bring in other people’s stories and experiences.

She told Hits, “I don’t want to write songs that are just about me, I want it to mean something for people a couple of different ways.”