Ella Langley and America’s Need for Non-Girlboss Songs

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has spent the most weeks as a #1 non-holiday hit on the Hot 100 of any female soloist, surpassing Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

Langley’s success is making a lot of people angry, but it showcases what our culture is starved to hear.

“Choosin’ Texas” has a simple premise – a woman is losing her love to another woman, her boyfriend’s ex. “Texas” is not only a reference to where the ex is from, but the old life and home state which her boyfriend is slowly choosing over her.

The song has an air of inevitability to it. The boyfriend’s heart was always in Texas and with his old girlfriend. His present relationship, while not over yet, is doomed by the magnetic call of Texas culture and memories.

“Choosin’ Texas” dropped just when country music was enjoying a resurgence in public favor and is widely enjoyed in a way that a female country song hasn’t been enjoyed since Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” or Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” The tune is insanely catchy in a way that feels like finally scratching an itch you couldn’t quite reach. And Ella Langley is impossibly cute in the music video.

Indeed, the fact that “Choosin’ Texas” has enjoyed such continued success more than six months after its release is completely unsurprising. But some people are very angry about it, nonetheless.

“I don’t know what sort of dark-sided witchcraft miss bangs is conjuring to make that mediocre a** song perform like it is, but something in the water ain’t clean,” one X user commented.

“GIRL NOBODY KNOWS WHO SHE IS WHO IS GENUINELY LISTENING TO THIS SONG EVERYBODY AND THEY MAMA KNOW WE BELONG TOGETHER AND I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU LIKE TFFFFFF,” another said.

Some people will find a problem with everything.

But while Langley seems to be annoying a certain segment of people with her popularity, that alone is not reason to believe she is hitting a special nerve. Thus, it is worth looking at why her music is successful, and what that success says about that for which our culture is starved.

In “Bottom of Your Boots,” Langley begs a man to be honest about his intentions towards her and confess his love if they are to continue their relationship. “If you’re gonna love me, lay it on the table / Tell me how you really feel, give it a label / If you’re gonna hold me, don’t just hold me all night / Better hold me like you wanna hold me for the rest of your life.”

The song is not a conservative one, as the opening lines imply that she is already in bed with a man who hasn’t yet defined the relationship. Yet it does speak to the human instinct for romantic commitment which has persisted in most women’s hearts despite the sexual revolution.

In “Be Her,” Langley describes the woman with whom she wishes she could trade places. “She’s a lover, a mother, a sister, and wife / She rolls over in the morning to the love of her life … She knows being rich is just a state of mind / She stays talking to Jesus, calls her mama all the time.”

There are dozens of songs from Langley like this. As a normal, pretty woman who sings about love and heartbreak in a vulnerable, feminine way, Langley’s songs aren’t bitter war cries of girl-boss-hood (e.g., “I Can Buy Myself Flowers,” “Manchild”). There’s little indication that these feminine markers make Langley a conservative, indeed, far too many conservatives are obsessed with labeling every slightly non-woke celebrity for their cause. But Langley’s success is an indication that we haven’t lost our need for uncynical, romantic pop songs, despite a world in which pop star women are churning out endless angry, resentful slop that only mentions a romantic relationship positively if it involves lots of meaningless and uncommitted sex.