Ella Langley Passes Mariah Carey After 23 Weeks at No. 1

Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a 23rd week, passing Mariah Carey’s Christmas standard.

The chart is dated Sept. 26. Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” had held the all-time mark at 22 weeks, collected a few at a time each winter since 2019. Langley’s country single, released in October 2025, did the job inside one release cycle.

Ella Langley Passes Mariah Carey at 23 Weeks

The 27-year-old Alabama singer’s hit rewrites the longevity list that has stood, in some form, since the Hot 100 began in August 1958. The weeks do not have to be consecutive. They only have to add up.

LONGEST RUNS AT NO. 1 ON THE HOT 100

“Choosin’ Texas” debuted on the Hot 100 dated Nov. 1, 2025, as Langley’s fifth career entry, at No. 39. It became her first top 10 in January and first led on the chart dated Feb. 14. SAWGOD and Columbia Records released it, with Triple Tigers working country radio.

Carey Needed Seven Christmases for 22 Weeks

Carey’s carol first came out on Oct. 29, 1994, on Merry Christmas, and was ineligible for the Hot 100 then. It entered the chart on Jan. 8, 2000, and did not reach No. 1 until Dec. 21, 2019, when it stayed for three weeks. After that it came back each winter, mostly on U.S. streams, and never needed a new campaign to do it.

HOW THE CHRISTMAS SONG STACKED 22 WEEKS

1. Dec. 21, 2019: First No. 1 run, three weeks straight.
2. Dec. 19, 2020: One week at No. 1.
3. Jan. 2, 2021: One more week from the same holiday window.
4. Dec. 25, 2021: Three consecutive weeks.
5. Dec. 17, 2022: Four consecutive weeks.
6. Dec. 23, 2023: Two consecutive weeks.
7. Dec. 14, 2024: Four consecutive weeks.
8. Dec. 13, 2025: Four consecutive weeks, with the 20th week on the chart dated Dec. 20, the 21st on Dec. 27, and the 22nd on Jan. 3, 2026.

Those visits were 22 weeks stacked across holiday seasons, never more than four in a row. A song that only spikes when playlists turn to snow was always going to be hunted by anything that can sit on radio in March and in August.

Carey had held this crown before. “One Sweet Day,” her duet with Boyz II Men, led for 16 weeks in 1995-96, a mark later tied by “Despacito” and then passed by “Old Town Road.” Shaboozey matched Lil Nas X at 19 weeks in 2024. The Christmas single took the record back last winter. It did not keep it through a full calendar year.

The Hot 100 Run Began in February

Langley’s 23 weeks are non-consecutive. The song left the top and came back more than once after Feb. 14, which is how a country record lives on a pop chart now: it yields a week to a giant, then returns when the streams and the spins line up again.

On the latest list, Stella Lefty’s “Boston” holds at No. 2 and Morgan Wallen’s “Been by Now” rises 4-3. Country titles, meaning songs that have hit Hot Country Songs, have occupied the Hot 100’s top three, top four, or top five 16 times in the chart’s history, and 12 of those have come since July. Langley’s own “Be Her” slips 9-10 after peaking at No. 2, blocked by the same single that just took the all-time weeks record.

The louder complaint around the milestone is that a midtempo heartbreak song cannot possibly have the cultural weight of Houston or Carey in their prime. That argument treats the Hot 100 like a monument. The tally is a weekly mix of listening, not a hall of fame vote, and this one has been in rotation since autumn 2025.

What the Song Is Saying

Langley wrote “Choosin’ Texas” with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert, and Joybeth Taylor. It is a Tennessee woman watching a man drift toward another girl and another state, and deciding not to chase him. The chorus does not beg. It shrugs.

Nate Sloan, a musicologist at the University of Southern California who co-hosts Switched On Pop, points to a line that does the whole job: “It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see / A cowboy always finds a way to leave.” He calls the vocal “like syrup,” long phrases that settle into the groove rather than detonating a big pop moment. Charles L. Hughes, a Rhodes College professor and author of Country Soul, hears late-1970s and early-1980s country that borrowed from R&B and pop, then run through a post-Lambert writing style. Specific places and records sit in the verses, including George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” and a glass of Tennessee whiskey.

Claire Heinichen, a senior editor at Spotify, said the track “started big” on the service’s Hot Country playlist, then moved into Today’s Top Hits and into mood lists for driving, chill, and cookouts. “It really can work everywhere,” she said. That is the structural edge on a Christmas standard. Nobody files this one away on Dec. 26.

Today doesn’t feel like a real thing. It feels fake and somebody’s gonna be like, ‘Ha ha, we’re kidding the whole time.’ I’m gonna go out and celebrate tonight.

Ella Langley, Instagram, Sept. 22, 2026

She captioned the video “23 weeks Texas forever,” and earlier on Sept. 22 called the mark “absolutely insane.” In a conversation earlier this year she said the run still felt unreal, and that fans had “taken ahold of it.” On Sept. 22 she added that the song is changing her life, the writers’ lives, and her family’s, and that it is “growing an atmosphere for something I’m gonna be able to do the rest of my life.”

Radio Is Now Carrying the No. 1

Luminate, which supplies the chart data, counted a dip in streams and a rise in radio for the Sept. 11-17 tracking week. The Hot 100’s streaming, radio airplay and sales mix is why a title can hold the top while one pillar slips.

THE SEPT. 11-17 TRACKING WEEK

The song holds for a 23rd week at No. 1 on Streaming Songs and jumps 6-2 for a new high on Radio Songs. It sits at No. 4 on Adult Pop Airplay, No. 7 on Pop Airplay, and No. 9 on Adult Contemporary. Digital Song Sales has it at No. 1 for an 18th week, tying BTS’s “Dynamite” (2021) and “Butter” (2020) for the longest lead on that list.

On Hot Country Songs it is No. 1 for a 41st week. It already ruled Country Airplay for three weeks in February and March, the third of Langley’s five leaders at that format. Jaime Marconette of Luminate has described country’s audience as younger and more streaming-first, a shift this single used, then converted into pop-radio audience as the year wore on. Through mid-August, Luminate had the song at 911 million on-demand streams in the United States and 1.26 billion globally.

Doubt that anyone is still playing it runs into that radio figure. 58.3 million audience impressions is not a nostalgia spike. It is weekday listening in September.

A Third No. 1 Week for Dandelion

The single is the lead from Dandelion, Langley’s second studio album after Hungover (2024). Sawgod and Columbia issued the set on April 10. On the Billboard 200 dated April 25 it opened at No. 1 with 169,000 equivalent album units in its first week, according to Luminate, the largest week for a country album by a woman in two years.

DANDELION’S OPENING WEEK

• Total units: 169,000 equivalent album units in the United States, week ending April 16.
• Streaming: 128,000 streaming-equivalent units, equal to 130.46 million on-demand official streams of the album’s tracks.
• Sales: 39,000 album sales, her best sales week, with track-equivalent units covering the rest.
• The prior album: Hungover arrived in August 2024 and peaked at No. 20, the same week Dandelion opened at No. 1.

Dandelion spent its first two weeks at No. 1 and never left the top five. On the Billboard 200 dated Sept. 19 it returned to No. 1 for a third nonconsecutive week, on 67,000 units in the week ending Sept. 10.

The same Sept. 22 that locked the Hot 100 record, NSAI held its ninth annual Nashville Songwriter Awards at the Ryman Auditorium. Song of the Year went to “Choosin’ Texas,” credited to Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, and Joybeth Taylor. Langley is due on the Dandelion Tour in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sept. 24.

Christmas Still Gets a Shot Each December

Holiday titles remain eligible on the Hot 100 each season. Carey’s song has used that rule every winter since 2019, and the next window is only a few months away. Two more weeks at No. 1 would tie Langley. Three would pass her. That is the entire remaining math, and it is why a 23-week “all-time” mark can still move before Inauguration Day playlists exist.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The current holder: “Choosin’ Texas” leads with 23 non-consecutive weeks on the Hot 100 dated Sept. 26.
• The old method: “All I Want for Christmas Is You” reached 22 weeks by returning each winter, with seasonal runs of one to four weeks.
• The format gap: Langley’s single is still adding pop, adult, and country airplay in September; the Carey record needed the calendar to turn to Christmas.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• December 2026: Whether the carol logs enough No. 1 weeks this winter to tie or retake the mark is not knowable from a September chart.
• Further Langley weeks: Streams are down 9% in the latest tracking week, so the next few Hot 100s will show whether radio’s rise keeps the song at the top.

Langley does not need snow for another week. Carey’s song does. That is how a country single took a record built in December, and how December still gets a vote.