September 9, 2026 - Celebrity News

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” Sets Non-Holiday Record with 21 Weeks at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100

Celebrity News Staff 2 on September 9, 2026

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has spent 21 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, setting the record for the longest-running non-holiday chart-topper in the chart’s 68-year history. The single, released in October 2025 as the lead track from Langley’s sophomore album Dandelion, surpassed Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at 19 weeks each, and now trails only Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (22 weeks) for the all-time record across all categories.

Key Takeaways

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has accumulated 21 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the longest-running non-holiday chart-topper in the chart’s history.
The single surpassed “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X (19 weeks, 2019) and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey (19 weeks, 2024) for the non-holiday record, and sits one week behind Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (22 weeks, 2019-2026) for the all-time mark.
Langley, 27, became the first female artist to simultaneously top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts, and the first artist known for primarily recording country music to hold the top two spots on the Hot 100 for multiple weeks.
The song has been certified six-times platinum and has spent 45 weeks on the Hot 100 since debuting on November 1, 2025.
Langley swept all seven of her nominations at the 2026 ACM Awards on May 17, setting the record for wins by an artist in a single ceremony.

A 21-Week Run Built on a Non-Consecutive Path to the Record

“Choosin’ Texas” first reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart dated February 14, 2026, four months after its October 17, 2025, release on SAWGOD/Columbia Records. From that point forward, the single’s path to the record followed a pattern that has become characteristic of the streaming era: extended periods at number one interrupted by brief displacements from other artists, followed by returns to the top. Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead,” Drake’s “Janice STFU,” Ariana Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” and Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” each temporarily dethroned “Choosin’ Texas” during the spring and early summer, only for Langley’s single to reclaim the top position within one or two weeks.

The non-consecutive nature of the run is not an asterisk. It is the defining structural feature of how number-one records work under the current chart methodology. Before the streaming era, a song typically had one continuous run at number one, and once it fell, it rarely returned. The integration of streaming data, radio airplay, and digital sales into a single composite metric created a chart environment in which a song with sustained, broad-based consumption can yo-yo between number one and number two for months. “Choosin’ Texas” has occupied the top position for 21 of the 30 weeks since it first reached number one, a dominance ratio that earlier chart eras simply did not produce.

By the tracking week ending August 27, “Choosin’ Texas” generated 24.2 million official streams (essentially flat week over week), 56.8 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 2%), and 7,000 digital and physical copies sold (down 9%). The three-legged consumption profile, strong across streaming, radio, and sales simultaneously, is what has sustained the single’s chart position against competitors that tend to spike in one metric while fading in others.

The Record Sits in the Context of Country Music’s Expanding Chart Presence

“Choosin’ Texas” did not arrive in a vacuum. Langley’s chart run is the latest in a sequence of country and country-adjacent singles that have dominated the Hot 100 in ways that would have been structurally impossible a decade ago. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” spent 19 weeks at number one in 2024, tying the record set by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” in 2019. Morgan Wallen became the first artist known primarily for country music to debut a single at number one on the Hot 100 in 2023. Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion in 2024 further blurred the genre line. Langley’s run extends this trajectory, and her distinction is that “Choosin’ Texas” is not a genre crossover in the traditional sense. The song is produced by Langley, Miranda Lambert, and Ben West. It was written by Langley, Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor. Lambert provides background vocals. Tom Bukovac and Ben Flanders play guitar. The sonic profile is country in structure and instrumentation, with no featured hip-hop verse, no pop-dance production, and no genre-blending concession to mainstream radio formatting.

The chart mechanics that allow a country single to dominate the Hot 100 for 21 weeks have as much to do with platform economics as they do with listener preference. Country audiences have historically been among the most loyal and consistent streaming cohorts, generating high per-capita replay rates on both paid and ad-supported platforms. When other artists debut at number one for a week and then fall, a country single with a deep, habitual listener base can sit underneath them and return to the top the following week. “Choosin’ Texas” has done this repeatedly since February, converting steady consumption into cumulative chart weeks while flashier releases burn through their audience in a single tracking period.

Langley Set Multiple Simultaneous Records Across Billboard’s Country and Pop Charts

The Hot 100 milestone is the headline, but “Choosin’ Texas” has set records across several Billboard charts simultaneously. Langley became the first female artist in Billboard chart history to top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts at the same time. The song has also spent 20 weeks at number one on the Streaming Songs chart. On the charts dated May 6 and May 23, 2026, Langley held the number-one and number-two positions on the Hot 100 simultaneously, with “Choosin’ Texas” at number one and “Be Her” at number two, making her the first artist known primarily for recording country music to occupy both top spots for multiple weeks. Morgan Wallen had previously achieved a one-week hold on the top two spots in May 2025.

Langley’s album Dandelion, released on April 10, 2026, through SAWGOD and Columbia Records, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The album was co-produced by Langley, Lambert, and West, and recorded at Sound Emporium in Nashville. It has generated four charting singles: “Choosin’ Texas,” “Be Her,” “I Can’t Love You Anymore” (a collaboration with Morgan Wallen that reached number one on Country Airplay), and “Loving Life Again.” A fifth single, “Jaded,” is currently in release.

The awards circuit has tracked the chart performance. At the 61st Academy of Country Music Awards on May 17, 2026, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Langley swept all seven of her nominations, including Female Artist of the Year and Artist-Songwriter of the Year, setting the record for wins by a single artist in one ACM ceremony. At the 59th CMA Awards in November 2025, Langley won three awards, tying with Riley Green and Lainey Wilson for the evening’s most-awarded artist. The ACM sweep, in particular, marked a break from recent precedent. The ceremony had been dominated by Lainey Wilson in 2024 and 2025, and Langley’s clean sweep signaled a generational shift in the voting body’s center of gravity.

Billboard’s 2026 Chart Formula Change Provides Context for Interpreting the Record

Any discussion of a 2026 chart record requires acknowledgment of the methodological change Billboard implemented at the start of the year. Effective with the chart dated January 17, 2026, Billboard revised the equivalency ratios used to convert streams into album-equivalent units. The threshold dropped from 3,750 ad-supported streams or 1,250 paid/subscription streams per unit to 2,500 ad-supported or 1,000 paid/subscription streams per unit. The change means that each stream now counts for more in the chart calculation than it did in 2025, and paid-subscription streams carry proportionally heavier weight than ad-supported streams.

The practical effect is that artists with strong streaming profiles benefit from the new formula, while artists whose chart performance relied more heavily on radio airplay or physical sales see a relative decrease in chart leverage. For “Choosin’ Texas,” which generates roughly 24 million streams per week alongside 57 million radio airplay impressions and 7,000 weekly sales, the formula change is a tailwind but not the primary driver of the song’s performance. The single’s radio and sales numbers would have supported a strong chart position under the old methodology as well. The new formula amplifies the margin by which streaming-heavy consumption patterns dominate the chart, but Langley’s three-legged consumption base means the record does not rest on a single metric inflated by the rule change.

The all-time record remains within reach. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” accumulated 22 weeks at number one over seven holiday seasons between 2019 and 2025, returning to the top of the chart each December as seasonal streaming surges push it back up. If “Choosin’ Texas” adds one more week at number one, Langley will tie Carey’s all-time mark. Whether the 27-year-old from Hope Hull, Alabama, can hold the top spot long enough to surpass it before Carey’s annual December return is the open question heading into the fall.

FAQs

How Many Weeks Has “Choosin’ Texas” Spent at Number One?

“Choosin’ Texas” has spent 21 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 as of September 2026. The song first reached number one on the chart dated February 14, 2026, and has held the top position for 21 of the 30 weeks since. Only Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (22 weeks) has spent more time at number one in Hot 100 history.

Who Wrote “Choosin’ Texas”?

Ella Langley co-wrote “Choosin’ Texas” with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert, and Joybeth Taylor. The song was produced by Langley, Lambert, and Ben West, and features Lambert on background vocals. It was released on October 17, 2025, through SAWGOD/Columbia Records as the lead single from Langley’s second album, Dandelion.

What Records Has Ella Langley Set in 2026?

Langley became the first female artist to simultaneously top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts. She set the record for the longest-running non-holiday number one in Hot 100 history, held the top two positions on the Hot 100 simultaneously for multiple weeks, swept all seven nominations at the 2026 ACM Awards, and debuted her album Dandelion at number one on the Billboard 200.

What EVOKE Your Story Reveals About the Real Reason Careers Take a Sharp Turn

Celebrity News Staff on September 9, 2026

Edited

By Kate Sarmiento

Public reinvention follows a pattern that rarely gets named directly. It shows up when someone visible walks away from the exact career, company, or role that made them known, and it tends to happen after they’ve succeeded at it, not after they’ve failed. Anna Rósa Parker, founder of EVOKE Your Story™, has spent years working with actors, executives, and public-facing leaders on this exact moment: the point where a person stops accepting a story about who they are and starts asking whether it was ever fully theirs to begin with.

You don’t need a public career for that question to apply. It surfaces any time a role you’ve played long enough starts to feel less like a choice and more like a script you inherited.

The Role You Play Long Enough to Forget You’re Playing It

Identity rarely forms as one deliberate decision. It builds through repetition: praise for a particular behavior, recognition for a particular skill, a role reinforced until it stops being a choice and starts being assumed. Psychologists have found that people construct a story to explain their own life, and that story becomes the filter for nearly every decision that follows (Source: Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 2019).

For public figures, an audience speeds this up. A role becomes a brand, and a brand becomes an expectation repeated by enough people that it starts to feel like a fact instead of a description.

This disconnect is common even among people who consider themselves reflective. Research spanning nearly 5,000 people found that while most believe they know themselves clearly, only a small fraction actually do when measured against how others experience them (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2018). The story becomes so familiar it stops looking like a story. It just looks like the truth.

EVOKE was built originally for actors, off stage rather than on, helping them understand the narratives shaping their lives and careers. The work later expanded to other artists and creatives, and eventually to leaders and executives who recognized that many of the same questions applied to them. Once a story can be seen as a story, it becomes possible to decide whether it still fits.

The same pattern showed up once the work moved beyond actors. As the methodology proved effective, founders, executives, and organizations began asking for the same process, not because their work resembled acting, but because the underlying problem was identical. A leader who has been rewarded for years for playing a specific role, the decisive one, the unshakeable one, the one who never asks for help, ends up as boxed in by that role as any performer typed into one character. The setting changes. The mechanism doesn’t.

Why the Turning Point Waits Until After the Win

Crisis narrows focus. Someone fighting to keep a career or a company alive doesn’t have room to question whether that career or company still fits who they are. Survival takes the whole room.

Success does the opposite. It clears space, which is part of why so many pivots happen only after someone has already met the goal they set out to meet. The body plays a role here too. Research on heart-brain interaction has found that people make clearer, more values-aligned decisions when their nervous system is calm rather than under stress (Source: Integral Review, 2009). Someone in survival mode isn’t positioned for honest reflection. Someone who just met a major goal, and felt an unexpected flatness instead of relief, often is.

That flatness gets misread constantly, as ingratitude, burnout, or an early crisis. It’s more accurately read as information. The goal was met, and the question underneath it is still open. That’s not failure. It can be an invitation to look more closely at what’s still true, what no longer fits, and what feels authentically yours.

This is also why these pivots so rarely come with a clear villain or a single triggering event. There’s no scandal to point to, no failure to explain the change. That absence makes the shift harder for outside observers to categorize, and it’s exactly why “reinvention” becomes the catch-all word for something that was actually a much quieter process: a person paying attention to a feeling they used to override.

Audiences respond to these pivots partly because narrative itself works on a physical level. Character-driven stories have been shown to trigger oxytocin release in listeners, a response that makes the story feel personally relevant rather than distant (Source: Cerebrum, 2015). When a public figure frames a career change as a return to something true rather than an escape from failure, the audience isn’t just witnessing it. They’re recognizing a version of a question they’ve asked themselves.

The Story Isn’t the Enemy

None of this means the earlier version needs to be erased. A story that once worked can still hold value. The skills, judgment, and instincts built during those years don’t disappear the moment someone chooses a new direction.

The distinction is between a story someone is still choosing and a story someone has simply stopped questioning. The first is a foundation. The second becomes a limit shaped like a person’s whole life.

Reinvention, seen this way, isn’t about deleting what came before. It’s about looking at it honestly, keeping what still feels true, and becoming more fully who you authentically are. That’s a slower process than a headline can capture, and a more accurate one.

Your Next Chapter Doesn’t Need a Rebrand

The public figures whose pivots look effortless rarely describe them that way in private. What looks like a clean break usually followed months or years of sitting with a question before anyone else noticed anything had changed.

That question isn’t reserved for people with a public career. If a role at work, at home, or in front of any audience has started to feel like something being maintained rather than something meant, that’s worth taking seriously, not explaining away.

EVOKE Your Story™ was built for that exact point, before the headline, while the question is still forming. Explore the methodology and discover what becomes possible when you begin living with greater intention and in deeper alignment with who you authentically are.

Deb Davis Is Still Behind the Camera, and Now Center Stage Too

Celebrity News Staff on September 9, 2026

By: Fair Consulting Media

She built a career capturing other people’s best moments. Now, Deb Davis is stepping into her own spotlight, but not leaving her camera behind. She’s doing something far more interesting. She asks the women in front of her lens to stop hiding and helps them do the deep work required to mean it.

The Detroit-based photographer has spent years photographing polished, high-achieving women through her lens. But it wasn’t the glamour shots that stayed with her. It was what she saw underneath them. Time and again, Davis noticed the same quiet truth. These women were put-together on the outside, worn down and disconnected on the inside. That pattern, paired with her own journey as a breast cancer survivor, didn’t push her away from photography. Instead, it made her want to do something more.

Today she’s an author, speaker, life and empowerment coach, photographer, and the founder of The Transparency Table, and she’s quickly becoming one of the more talked-about voices in the personal transformation space. Her photography business, Detroit City Headshots, is still very much running. The Transparency Table is a separate company she built alongside it. Davis is clear that one didn’t grow out of the other. They’re two different businesses that happen to circle the same questions about confidence, identity, and what it takes for a woman to feel comfortable being seen.

Davis recently commanded the spotlight at the Leadership Experience Tour, wowing the crowd with the message she’s built her platform around. A woman can be achieving, performing, and holding everything together for everyone else, and still feel like a stranger to herself. But here’s what makes her different: she’s not just telling that story. She’s helping women change it.

“Transparency doesn’t mean telling everybody everything,” Davis says. “It begins with being willing to tell yourself the truth.”

It’s that idea, equal parts gentle and unflinching, that fills the pages of her book, The Faces of Transparency: What We Reveal, and drives the coaching work she’s best known for: The Transparency Journey™, a six-week experience that’s already carried previous groups of women through it, with the next cohort starting in November 2026.

Unlike a typical self-help program, The Transparency Journey™ isn’t built around checklists or five-step hacks. Davis designed it around six stages (Reveal, Release, Restore, Rise, Integrate, and Activate) meant to walk women through the messier, internal work of rediscovering who they are underneath the roles they play, and then actually living from it. It’s less “fix yourself” and more “come home to yourself.”

Photo Courtesy: Emma Burcusel Photography

Her camera work stays its own thing. Detroit City Headshots runs separately, with its own Confidence and Camera Ready workshop for women getting ready to be photographed. No coaching enrollment is required, and no photo session is tacked onto the end of the program. Some women do both because they want to. Davis doesn’t package them together.

The women drawn to Davis’s work aren’t struggling in any way outsiders would notice. They’re the ones everyone assumes have it together: the dependable friend, the high-performing executive, the mom who never seems to drop a ball. Davis knows the type well. She’s lived it. And that lived-in credibility, built over years of watching accomplished women up close, is what’s turning The Transparency Table from a personal mission into a growing movement, with additional cohorts and community gatherings already being planned beyond the November group.

For all the buzz building around her, Davis insists her message isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about stopping the performance long enough to hear yourself again.

“A woman can be functioning, achieving, caring for everyone around her and still be disconnected from herself,” she says.

It’s a line that’s landed with audiences before, and one Davis expects will keep resonating as the next group of women takes their seat at The Transparency Journey™ this November.

Follow Deb Davis and The Transparency Table at thetransparencytable.com, the Transparency Table Facebook Group, and LinkedIn.