Have you heard Choosin' Texas by Ella Langley?

These questions are so tiresome (not throwing shade on you, jaymc).

Good thread: https://bsky.app/profile/markharris.bsky.social/post/3mwiym3dgbs2y

I know what you mean, Alfred, but I am genuinely curious how ILX breaks down.

tbc I meant "Do we throw stank face at people who don't share my listening habits?"

As for me, I have never heard it in the wild. After it was number one for a few weeks earlier this week, I looked it up out of curiosity. That's the only time I've heard it.

Chris's article is interesting because I hadn't quite realized that some mainstream pop stations (perhaps mostly in northern cities?) are not playing the song at all. I thought maybe I had just missed it somehow.

Deliberately looked it up a couple days ago due to awareness of its popularity. I don't really get the fuss (it's not bad though), but country is not my genre

The first time I read it mentioned was about a year (!) ago on the 2025 country thread. I liked it immediately and top tenned it last December. Had no idea this would happen.

Todd in the Shadows similarly praised it in his top ten of 2025 video, which is where I first heard it a little after the start of the year.

yeah I have been hearing the title for many months. In a way I think I was waiting to see if I'd run into it in the wild, but my "wild" is pretty limited these days

I looked it up on YouTube a few weeks ago after reading about its massive popularity. I made it to the second chorus. It's fine, but who gives a shit?

The only English-language pop music I hear in the wild is in the grocery store or the drugstore, and that's all 30-40 years old. The Mexican restaurant I pick up tacos from roughly once a week plays what I think is more contemporary Latin pop.

Definitely heard of it, don’t know if I’ve heard it though.

After it was number one for a few weeks earlier this week

(earlier this *year* I meant)

South Florida's top 40 station plays her Morgan Wallen duet much more often.

I have never heard this. I also did not really read that article but my gut tells me that was written simply to kick up discourse and arguments.

"Do we throw stank face at people who don't share my listening habits?"

in your case, yes. the accusations of racism closely follow.

I also did not really read that article but my gut tells me that was written simply to kick up discourse and arguments.

Look, as a fellow music writer... sometimes you really need that hundred bucks.

lol “have you heard the biggest song of the year” um yes I have!

You have all heard it you just don’t know it, once you hear the guitar hook you’ll be like “Oooh right”

Yeah, I’ve heard it a ton, but we are all in cultural silos that prevent even hit songs from being universally known.

just listened to it, and as far as I know I’d never heard it, but if I had it probably would’ve completely passed by unnoticed. Not bad though.

voted no, though I have seen posts/articles about its run at #1 and/or people claiming not to have heard it, thought “this doesn’t really have anything to do with me”, and scrolled on

its likely been playing ambiently in some environment I’ve been in, some store or something, but I usually have headphones in when shopping

I was also in nashville recently so it seems implausible that I didn’t hear it once, though most of the bars I went to were playing live music. maybe someone played a cover though

because of this thread I put it on. definitely not familiar, except in the way any sort of anodyne song like this is. it’s fine!

looked it up and listened to it the other day

now for the real question: how many yall heard "think as you drunk" by riley greene?

in your case, yes. the accusations of racism closely follow.

― austinato (Austin), Sunday, September 27, 2026 11:45

No idea what this means.

The local bbc radio station they play in the office plays this occasionally but I did not ever recognise it or even really acknowledge it until they mentioned the chart fact. Even then, I can’t remember how it goes. I felt similar with the song that recently had a chart record in the UK, which I can’t remember the title or artist for.

Personally I find this fascinating. Ubiquity obviously still exists (Taylor was mentioned and seemingly everyone I know saw the Odyssey) but culture seems more fragmented every year. My next door neighbour could be living in a whole different world.

xpost

yeah wtf is that

sounds vaguely familiar but i don't have a firm enough memory to answer in the affirmative. nice song

now for the real question: how many yall heard "think as you drunk" by riley greene?

I'd never even heard of Riley Greene until I saw an ad the other day for The Voice.

xpost It’s some Grammys beef that keeps coming back.

No clue.

I hear about it all the time, but haven't heard it.

I haven't heard this until just now, just a vague idea that there was a discourse around. It's fine, a solid 6/10, it was number one in the UK too, but only for one week. It's funny that the US has it's own 23-weeker number one discourse buster when we had our own 23-weeker number one discourse buster in the UK earlier this year ('Rein Me In' by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, a solid 7/10)

Will say that the music video for Choosin' Texas has sections where they turn down the music for some diegetic sound/speech, something I find off-putting and which they should stop doing.

Brit here. Have heard of it, but not it, only through the RS related BSky chatter this weekend.

Checked and it went to #1 here for a single week last month, currently #2 so expect it may climb back up again.

I guess Radio 2 is the target audience for it, but avoid that and indeed most pop radio in the wild. Let me know when Brandy Clark has a #1 single.

have not heard, have of course heard about it. I don't listen to pop/country radio and what I've read about it tells me I'm not interested.

Marissa Moss seems like a good writer, but I do wish that people at Rolling Stone & elsewhere could remember that there is a world outside the US where other things are often popular. I don't mean they need to cover them (though that would be great) just that making sweeping assumptions about your readership and their lives is usually a bad idea.

I do recommend Moss' book Her Country, about the rise of Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris, etc.

wonder how much of the oddly aggressive tone of the article is the RS editor tweaking it for clickbait purposes

I think Moss is correct to note that many people like to proclaim their ignorance of country music as a status marker. But I think her own familiarity with the genre leads her to overestimate how well-known the song is with the broad public; she seems to think that its chart dominance means that anyone who claims not to have heard it must be putting on an act.

What's interesting is that the other songs that have tied or set chart records in the past decade -- "Despacito," "Old Town Road," "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" -- do feel more culturally ubiquitous. But maybe if the Top 40 stations in my city played straight-ahead country music, "Choosin' Texas" would feel like more of a phenomenon to me, too.

i knew the song upon release bc i liked her prior single "weren't for the wind" (which i actually prefer). "texas" was obviously going to be a hit but i wasn't expecting it to be a smash of this caliber. that said, i live in philly and still listen to radio more than most ppl do and the only time i heard this on the top 40 station was some generic dance mix played during one of the syndicated weekend mixshows -- it was rather comical but also not as bad as i thought it'd be. the hot ac station has played it (the original lol) some but not super much. if you don't listen to country radio (i don't anymore) it is easy to look at its chart achievements and be slightly puzzled

much of the entire chart is rather soft lately tho and i don't think most ppl are paying super close of attention to current pop culture. like, be honest, look at the top 10 any given week this year and ask yourself how many of the songs truly feel like big hits. taylor swift's "i knew it, i knew you" was coasting effortlessly in the top 3 for weeks (months?) despite performing poorly on all streaming services except the programmed/passive-listenership ones. (it was just recently pushed to #1 on the pop airplay chart but is now getting promptly dropped like a hot potato, just as it was at country radio. i never heard it on the philly top 40 station except once just recently/during 'push week' -- station has a tight playlist, which i don't like, but luckily they do seem to ignore chart-hyped 'work records' that no one really cares about like this.)

Heard in Publix two minutes ago for (I think) the first time. Would have totally forgotten by now but opened phone and saw thread. Will now read thread to try and figure out what is in any way notable about it.

it's funny bc 10 years ago there were lots of rap hits doing excellent on the charts that pop radio would play v late or not at all. now the pendulum has swung the other way to something more safe sonically but now they still don't want it because it codes as country/conservative/"trad". (i do wonder why this song in particular had them dragging their heels so much tho -- top 40 did come around to "last night", "i need some help" etc. in a way that they simply have not for this one.)

this leaves very little left indeed with the exception of languid bedroom pop like ariana's latest snoozy hit, shit like "ordinary"/"lose control", 50% of taylor swift's recent singles output, etc. hilariously, two of the artists who most exemplify this type of safe, unchallenging, risk-averse material over the past decade or two, ed sheeran and p!nk, both currently seem to be on sudden adult contemporary radio time-out bc of the recent macklemore incident. the programming execs are probably going to wait 8 months for their moldy market research reports to tell them what to do next.

incidentally mainstream pop radio ratings are still quite bad, at the level that drove a mass exodus from the format in the early/mid-90s before teenpop and "rhythmic" crossover saved them in the decade's final years. stations are not switching format today tho bc there aren't comparable upswings anywhere else except for country and christian contemporary, which already appeal mainly to old ppl/conservatives. the big broadcasters have recently been laying ppl off in droves and many ppl in the biz no longer expect it to last another decade or two. good fucking riddance!!

Okay wait it's coming back to me now. This is the song with the guitar hook (mentioned upthread) that kept making me expect to hear Steely Dan - "Change of the Guard"

I heard it early in it's run on NPR I believe. It caught my ear because I thought she was singing "Jews in Texas".

But I think her own familiarity with the genre leads her to overestimate how well-known the song is with the broad public; she seems to think that its chart dominance means that anyone who claims not to have heard it must be putting on an act.

i truly don't know a single person who even listens to the radio. people use streaming services and most of them are tuned to people's existing genre tastes. Writer seems to be living in the 1990s.

anyway this a real Curtains for Zoosha moment

xxxpost Yeah, it true—listening to Philly hit radio I would figure “Stupid Song” is the biggest hit out there. It’s on all the time.

Guitar sound reminds me of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac

i truly don't know a single person who even listens to the radio.

*raises hand*

I listen most days, and was presenting a show for an hour today (not sure if that means I count double or not at all)

xp now we're talking

and yes, map called it - this thread is asking a question, I am answering, this song might be good! but I have only heard about it from this thread, and I genuinely do not have the time or desire to listen to something "just because it's popular", nor do I feel any sense of obligation to do so.

this isn't hard to understand - I learned a long time ago not to crash other threads with disdain for no good reason, lsat time I did it was with a particularly annoying Radiohead revival maybe 15 years ago

I voted "have not heard it, but have heard of it" for the record, the confusion seems to come from some posters who think I somehow have an obligation to waste my precious time listening to it. and my opinions are not about the song itself, but the smug assumptions that people who are plugged into popular culture seem to always make.

does she do a Black Sabbath cover on acoustic guitar? now that I might check out.

In the time it took to post all that you could have listened to the song.

As for the reason for the thread, I forgot to mention that I first heard the song earlier this summer in the lobby of a theatre in the Twin Cities burbs, and after a few subsequent listens, I can easily see it slotting in as the cognate to the "Little Past Little Rock"-style slightly-propulsive-yet-plaintive country that served as a welcome break from the Brooks & Dunn/Mark Wills hegemony of the late '90s. While my recent country prefs fall more on the rowdy axis (Morgan Wade's "Wilder Days", Caylee Hammack's "Redhead", the Kassi Ashton tracks I added to the country thread, Ashland Craft, Sturgill Simpson, Tennille Townes's "White Horse"), sometimes it's good to calm the hell down, and that's where Zach Bryan, Kashus Culpepper, and Ella are there for us

Heard of it (because of the longest running Billboard stories) but have not heard it. Since I stopped going to bars there's not really a vector in my life for casual exposure to Top 40 music.

In the time it took to post all that you could have listened to the song.

One could even listen while typing.

why is the video 7:01 long, is this prog pop country?

recommended video sidebar:
When Ella Langley SHUTS DOWN Rude People Who Mock Christians

It sounds like background music for a Ford truck commercial.

The music video is basically a mini Yellowstone episode.

any hot dudes in it? that would get me to listen to this.

Dozens of Kevin Costners.

I misheard the lyric as "he's Jews in Texas" and thought it was a Kinky Friedman tribute.

That’s the Drake version.

Dozens of Kevin Costners.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 9, 2026 8:18 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

bummer, i was hoping for trailer trash with face tats.

she does do a song with riley green who is looking really really hunky to me these days

noted

aw it's a cute song. he's hot for sure. too much alcohol though. where's my weed country at.

here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm6B8DsL69w

xp i tried with angela autumn but she didn't grab me for whatever reason

This ain't Texas, ain't no choosin'

wait i like aa now? weird

They allow weed in aa now?

that's the higher power they talk about

Damn, Hitchhike To Rhome is so fucking rad

I misheard the lyric as "he choos in Texas" and thought it was about missing a train.

He chews in Texas

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/kUQAAOSw8d5mvUKB/s-l1600.jpg

He wears Jimmy Choos in Texas.

Wait no

Chuy's is in Texas.

https://i.postimg.cc/ZKN6tzFr/raw-Image.jpg

That's why I hang my hat in Tennessee.

The only pop country I’ve heard in the wild is Taylor’s Toy Story song. I live in Cambodia though but have Australian neighbors with a ten year old girl who says “Alexa play…” really loudly

I’ll take @ellalangleymsic over Kacey Musgraves any day.

And if I’m choosin’ Texas, I’ll take Ken Paxton over James Talarico. pic.twitter.com/sD9yzSF955

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) October 12, 2026

Mods, what's Noem's ILX handle

why are liberals so frothed up to engage in culture war over ella langley, like what is at the root of it

people need to invent a villain they want to fight but who isn't presently existing in the culture? sort of what it feels like?

I don’t think you have a dog in this fight but if you did you would have shot it. https://t.co/bI50bahJZu

— K A C E Y (@KaceyMusgraves) October 12, 2026

xpost - i saw the song was in the news again and this is the thread about the song so i posted a link? pretty standard

this is surely Noem trying to invent a hero rather than any lib trying to invent a villain

you have to get ellalangleymsic to say his own name backwards to get him to disappear.

so wait does this mean that ella langley is a sissy

https://bsky.app/profile/pixelfish.bsky.social/post/3mxrdekfgrc2a

still haven't heard Ella Langley but it pleased me she both untagged herself from the Noem post and liked Kasey's.

Daniel_RF OTM, basically

Because I left my digital Walkman at home, I put on the car radio this afternoon. As soon as the song that was playing ended, this song came on.

weirdly I have had this song in my head all day despite only having it heard it twice (tho I did scan the lyrics yesterday)

my manager’s taking his daughter and wife to the Ella Langley concert tonight

Them old Hank tunes, the Memphis blues we used to sing.

I heard this song in a Thai restaurant a couple of weeks ago.

choosin' pad thai

Y'all are spoiling my plans to open a Korean fusion BBQ chain called Chosin / Texas