Choosin’ Texas Becomes The Biggest Non-Christmas Hit Ever

Ella Langley is on the rise! She recently swept the Academy of Country Music Awards with seven trophies, claiming the record of most awards won by one artist in one night, was named by Billboard as their "Women in Music Powerhouse Honoree" in 2026, and now has the biggest hit song...ever? Step aside Taylor Swift, let's examine the data!

Get our free mobile app

How Hits Are Ranked

The Billboard Hot 100 has long been a standard barometer of a song's success, ranking streaming, radio airplay, and digital sales of individual tracks using different weights which they procure based on how much of the market share each format is taking. However, the Hot 100's methodology has been called into question due to its ever-changing rules, numerous metrics, and lack of consistency across decades. For example, until 1998, only songs released as physical singles counted toward the list, shutting out album-only cuts with massive play, whereas now album cuts frequently dominate the top 10. Is that fair?

I believe a fairer methodology would be to look at one metric at a time, and that metric should be the top way songs are consumed. Until 2004 it was physical sales, from 2005 to 2015 it was digital sales, and since 2015 it has been streaming. And let's make sure we keep it to songs released as singles only to keep our methodology consistent, since again, album-only cuts were not tracked until 1998.

Ella's Record

With this fairer and simpler methodology in mind, Ella Langley has indeed broken the record for the longest #1 non-Christmas hit ever and the biggest hit of the 2020s, racking up a total of 27 weeks with "Choosin' Texas"! She is creeping ever closer to Mariah Carey's perennial anthem "All I Want For Christmas Is You," which has racked up 29 weeks total as it comes back to the top for a few weeks now seemingly every year!

blue white and red flag

Is this a freak occurrence or a sign of what is to come in the music world? Well, the fact that country music is "hot" right now is something nobody can deny. In fact, country songs have been performing better today than at any point in American history going back to the 1940s!

Blockbuster country hits are now being streamed by millions of fans for weeks on end. In fact, Morgan Wallen's country smash "Last Night" takes 3rd place on our list of longest number one songs ever, taking up 20 weeks as the streaming king in 2023!

Note: By the standard Hot 100 metric, Carey takes first place with "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (22 weeks), "Choosin' Texas" (20 weeks), and Shaboozey's "A Bar Song" and "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X tie at 19.

READ MORE: TWO KILLED AFTER CAR RAMS THREE ICE VEHICLES IN ELLENSBURG

Where Do We Go From Here?

I don't know, but it seems to me country is going to be America's dominant music genre. I can't go anywhere without hearing it! I welcome this change as a sign that Americans are becoming more in touch with their tradition and heritage.

Yakima, what do you think?