This week, for the 23rd time, country star Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" sits at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Those 23 nonconsecutive weeks are an all-time record, though the singer's hold on that mantle could well be brief: Langley snatches the record from the Queen of Christmas herself, Mariah Carey, whose 1994 standard "All I Want for Christmas Is You" hit its 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd week at No. 1 just this past December.
There'll be plenty of questions to answer in the coming months, such as, "Will 'Choosin' Texas' and 'All I Want for Christmas' simply trade places atop the Hot 100, year in and year out, until the heat death of the universe?" and "Could we interest America in a different song, perhaps?" and "Why, God, why?" (Of course, Tuesday brought news of a third potential juggernaut, in the form of a new Taylor Swift single, "Patient Zero," dropping Friday.)
But future-casting can wait for another day. Let's take a look at how we got here — and survey just how and why "Choosin' Texas" has come to define and dominate the pop charts in 2026.
1. It's a good song! Endless repetition at the top of the pop charts can get a little dispiriting — imagine surveying the movie industry's box-office breakdown, only to learn that everyone's still swarming theaters to see F1: The Movie — but we could do, and have done, a lot worse than "Choosin' Texas." A relatable lament about losing a guy to a pretty stranger, "Choosin' Texas" feels surprisingly full-grown for the top of a chart so frequently dominated by youthful pop earworms. It references "Amarillo by Morning"! It's lonesome, it's twangy, it's catchy as all get out, and it's above all timeless; you could imagine it being sung by, say, Tammy Wynette. In a way, it's country's counterpart to the songs of Olivia Dean, in that they'd be hits in any of the past 50 years.
2. The country audience, traditionally served by radio, has shifted to streaming. Setting Mariah aside for a moment, take a look at the other songs to post record-setting runs atop the Billboard Hot 100 in recent years. Behind Langley and Carey, the longest-running chart-toppers, with 19 weeks apiece, are Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)" and Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)." Both of those tracks are decidedly country-adjacent; right on their tail, with 16 weeks at No. 1, is Morgan Wallen's 2023 blockbuster "Last Night." In recent weeks, Langley's Dandelion and Wallen's I'm the Problem have risen to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart, more or less by default, because they just keep doing massive business on streaming, week in and week out.
3. Pop music is having a down year. Last week, the top four songs on the Hot 100 were all country or country-adjacent: In addition to "Choosin' Texas," you had Stella Lefty's "Boston," Taylor Swift's "I Knew It, I Knew You" and Morgan Wallen's "Been By Now." Behind them, you got a glimpse at a few of the pop hits that have surged in 2026: Ariana Grande's "Hate That I Made You Love Me," for example, and songs by Olivia Rodrigo, Olivia Dean and Bruno Mars, among others. But few of those pack the fizzy ubiquity of, say, Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" or Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club." The newest albums by Harry Styles, Gracie Abrams, Charli xcx and others failed to make the kind of cultural dent on the charts that fans have come to expect.
4. There's just so much music. It's never been harder to find a foothold on the charts: So many hundreds of albums come out every week that it's virtually impossible for any one person to keep up with them all, while the charts reflect the listening habits of an audience that's got a lifetime of on-demand music at their fingertips. Ironically, the effect of "more music than ever" is that listeners — and, more to the point, commercial radio programmers — are gravitating to fewer and fewer hits, rather than turning over their playlists to welcome in new music. So once a song has hit No. 1, especially on the strength of both radio airplay and streaming, its success can become self-reinforcing. Algorithms have a lot to do with the way all-time chart records are surpassed in the streaming era, and last year Billboard even tweaked its rules to help encourage turnover on the Hot 100.
5. Sales still matter. When it comes to the Billboard 200 albums chart, first-week sales are the surest way to send an album soaring to No. 1. But sales, of both physical and digital editions, can also fuel success on the Hot 100 singles chart. While "Choosin' Texas" has been a juggernaut on streaming — with 23 weeks and counting atop Billboard's main streaming chart — it's also topped the Digital Song Sales chart for 18 weeks, selling thousands of copies each time around. This week, it added another 6,000 copies to its total. Those sales go a long way toward settling close races for No. 1 on the Hot 100.
It all adds up to a historic chart run that — even with Swift making her inevitable debut atop the Hot 100 in a couple weeks — won't likely be interrupted until December, when music listeners dust off crusty old knick-knacks like artificial trees, snow globes and, for our sins, Michael Bublé.
Copyright 2026 NPR
