(September 24, 2026) – The song “Choosin’ Texas” by country star Ella Langley just set one of the Billboard Hot 100’s most important records. By holding at No. 1 there for its 23rd non-consecutive week (chart dated September 26), it surpassed Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” as the longest-running No. 1 in the Hot 100’s 68-year history.
The news of Langley’s feat was met on social media with the expected responses. Comments online ranged from “I still don’t know that song” to “Billboard charts suck now,” with the former sentiment (whether fact or not) expressed as incredulity over how a song that isn’t as ubiquitous in pop culture as, say, “I Will Always Love You” or “Macarena” during their heydays could be No. 1 for so long, and the latter point a reflection of people’s disdain over the fact that streaming numbers play such a huge role in a song’s chart fortunes today.
If all of this seems anticlimactic, it’s likely for one or both of the following reasons. First, it was just under nine months ago when Carey’s record was established. It was during the 2025/26 holiday season when “Christmas” surpassed Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” as the longest-running No. 1 – a record Lil Nas X set only six years earlier and which Shaboozey tied in 2024. Langley’s milestone marks the sixth time in the past decade where the record has been either tied or exceeded – a headline generated so rapidly that we could feel numb to it by now. Before that, Carey’s 16-week high mark (with Boyz II Men on “One Sweet Day”) stood alone for more than two decades.
But that argument is one of headline fatigue.
The second reason – and perhaps the most compelling one – is that many fans simply don’t care… and the factors that once forced us to care aren’t there anymore. In an increasingly individualized world where personalized algorithms drive which reels we see, what headlines we’re fed, and which entertainment is recommended to us, it goes without saying that many of those same drivers influence what music we’re likely to encounter daily – especially if we rely on streaming platforms for our song consumption. Even if you don’t follow country music and “Choosin’ Texas” managed to slip into one of your automated streaming playlists, it’s probable that you either skipped it or moved on to another channel if the tune didn’t make a good first impression, reducing the ability to recall the song when it started generating headlines.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean “Choosin’ Texas” is less popular or that it’s less worthy of chart glory than its record-setting predecessors. In fact, in any given week during its reign, Langley’s hit has led the No. 2 song by as much as 50% in chart points. The recent gaps between it and the runner-up tunes have been so wide that nothing has come close to toppling it since Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” briefly interrupted Langley’s run back in June. That gap has only widened over time; the spread between “Choosin’ Texas” and this week’s runner-up is more than twice the delta between “Texas” and the No. 2 song when Langley first took over in February.
So, how does a Texas-sized, two-steppin’ tune with that kind of performance still manage to elicit comments online like “I’ve never heard it” (sometimes followed by various unfounded but predictable conspiracy theories being attributed to its long-running No. 1 status)? Welp, for starters, Americans no longer must gather around the same water cooler to hear today’s No. 1 hits. Unlike in pre-streaming, pre-satellite radio and pre-digital download days, terrestrial radio (and, to a lesser extent, MTV) subjected huge segments of the population to the same relatively limited universe of popular music, which was programmed on a finite schedule with tight playlists determined by program directors and influenced to a degree by record company marketing.
None of those factors constrain today’s music consumption patterns. Yes, terrestrial radio still exists – and it’s still factored into Billboard’s Hot 100 formula – but with the variety of consumption methods now in play, radio’s impact is far less than it was at the turn of the 21st century when Billboard first expanded its Hot 100 radio panel to include all formats. In the early 2000s, there were several weeks when as many as four songs each racked up more than 100 million airplay impressions, with some songs exceeding 110 million impressions during those frames. Today’s top airplay getters normally hit a ceiling in the 60 million audience impression range. Langley’s “Texas” is currently at No. 2 in airplay with only 58 million impressions (behind the No. 1 radio chart song – JENNIE’s “Dracula” – with just 62.6 million). Think about it, “Dracula” is getting nearly 50 million fewer weekly airplay impressions at No. 1 than Sisqo’s “Thong Song” did 26 years ago (112 million).
More telling: the U.S. population was roughly 281 million in 2000 — compared with nearly 343 million today — making the decline in shared radio exposure per capita from 2000 to 2026 even more striking. And yes, streaming has replaced radio as the Hot 100’s dominant component and is a big part of why “Choosin’ Texas” has remained at the top, but that isn’t necessarily evidence that Billboard’s charts are broken. It may be evidence that American monoculture is.
I, for one, don’t subscribe to the notion that so many people “don’t know” this song. People will often make those comments for effect – as hyperbole over the notion that a simple tune like “Choosin’ Texas” is breaking chart records but isn’t as embedded in popular culture as a “Billie Jean” or a “Macarena.” After nearly 11 months of dominating the charts and headlines, the song would certainly be easy to locate should someone be inclined (see videoclip above if interested). I’d be surprised if some of the same people who claim unawareness of “Choosin’ Texas” haven’t followed that up with at least one listen to the tune.
Few people could make such claims about earlier chart blockbusters.
In 1993, someone who disliked Whitney Houston could still recognize “I Will Always Love You.” In 1978, someone who hated disco knew “Stayin’ Alive.” Someone who couldn’t stand “Macarena” in 1996 probably knew the dance – or the fact that there was one. They may not have liked that those were No. 1 songs, but they understood why they were.
The same can’t necessarily be said for “Choosin’ Texas” in 2026.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that Langley’s tune exists in a cultural ecosystem that is gigantic in absolute terms – the song dominated country radio earlier this year and, according to a recent Billboard estimate, has generated nearly $14 million in worldwide label and publishing revenue – but still could be virtually invisible outside of it. Instead of the old system where exposure was forced by radio programmers essentially telling millions of people, “Here is what America is listening to,” platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and their recommendation engines are increasingly telling an individual, “Here’s what you are likely to want to hear.” In many cases, that is not “Choosin’ Texas.”
In the old system, you heard songs you hated because they came on between songs you liked. You encountered genres you didn’t choose. You knew records simply because they were unavoidable. That’s how monoculture worked.
Now you can spend months happily consuming music without ever encountering the biggest song in some other listener’s universe. It just so happens that there’ve been enough “other listeners” out there streaming, buying and hearing “Choosin’ Texas” since Valentine’s Day to keep it at No. 1 past Labor Day.
Maybe the strangest thing about Langley’s record-breaking success isn’t that a song so many Americans claim not to know could become one of the biggest No. 1 hits in Billboard history. Maybe it’s that, in 2026, there’s nothing strange about that at all.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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