Taylor Swift set the record in 2012 and held onto it for 13 years. Ella Langley didn’t just break it. She lapped it.
“Choosin’ Texas” ruled the Billboard Hot 100 for a 17th week on the August 15-dated chart, the fourth-longest No. 1 run in the chart’s entire history. The record it broke back in March belonged to Taylor Swift, whose “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” spent three weeks on top in 2012.
Three weeks versus 17. That’s not breaking a record. That’s demolishing it.
The specific mark is the most weeks ever spent atop the Hot 100 by a woman with a song that also hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Before Langley, the leaderboard behind Swift was thin. Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” managed two weeks in 2024. Dolly Parton hit two weeks twice, with “9 to 5” in 1981 and “Islands in the Stream” alongside Kenny Rogers in 1983.
Langley has now held that record longer than all the women on that list combined.
The Record Fell in March and Ella Langley Never Looked Back
The takeover happened in stages, and watching it unfold in real time has been one of the more remarkable stretches in modern country music.
In mid-March, “Choosin’ Texas” tied Swift at three weeks. A week later, it hit four and passed her outright. By April, Billboard noted the song had “doubled up” on Swift’s mark at six weeks. As we covered when it reached its 11th week, the song had already broken Debby Boone’s 49-year-old record for the longest-leading Hot 100 No. 1 by a woman with a country hit.
That was six weeks ago. It hasn’t stopped since.
The song has now made six separate ascents to No. 1, the most distinct chart-topping stays ever recorded for a single title over one release cycle. It’s been knocked off five times by heavyweight releases, including Bad Bunny’s “DtMF,” Bruno Mars’ “I Just Might,” BTS’ “SWIM,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead,” and Taylor Swift’s own “Opalite.” Every single time, it climbed back.
Swift knocked her off the top spot, and Langley took it right back. There’s something almost poetic about that.
For You
The Records Have Stopped Being About Country Music
At 17 weeks, “Choosin’ Texas” isn’t competing with country songs anymore. It’s competing with the biggest hits in the history of the Hot 100, full stop.
It just rewrote the record for the most weeks on top by a non-holiday song from a woman, breaking a tie with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” from the mid-’90s. The only country-adjacent song ahead of it in recent memory is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which logged 19 weeks in 2024.
Langley also rewrote another Taylor Swift record along the way, taking the most weeks at No. 1 for a woman on the Country Songwriters chart, a run that has since stretched to 23 weeks.
Two Taylor Swift records. One song. One year.
The Song Came From a Writers Retreat and a Story About a Kangaroo
The origin of the biggest song of 2026 is about as country as it gets.
“Choosin’ Texas” was written by Langley alongside Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor, with Lambert and Ben West handling production. Langley told Billboard the session was her first time ever writing with Lambert. “I was on a writers retreat with Miranda, our first time writing together. At a young age, she had a pet kangaroo. She told me how she got pulled over once with the kangaroo in the passenger seat.”
A pet kangaroo in a passenger seat somehow led to the longest-running No. 1 by a woman in country music history. You can’t script that.
The song was released on October 17, 2025, as the lead single from Langley’s second album, Dandelion. Ten months later, it’s still sitting at the top of the biggest chart in music.
Taylor Swift held that record for 13 years, and nobody came close. Ella Langley took it in March, and by August, she’d held it more than five times longer than the woman who set it. A two-stepping heartbreak song from Hope Hull, Alabama, written in a room with Miranda Lambert telling kangaroo stories.
Country music didn’t ask for permission this year. It just took the whole thing.
