Ella Langley's Choosin' Texas breaks a US chart record. How long can it stay No. 1?
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' spent a 20th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 of 5 September, passing 'Old Town Road' and 'A Bar Song (Tipsy)'.
What happened
Billboard reported on that Ella Langley’s ‘Choosin’ Texas’ rules the Hot 100 for a 20th week on the chart dated , the sole longest run among non-holiday songs, passing the 19 weeks of ‘Old Town Road’ and ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’.
‘Choosin’ Texas’ has now led the Billboard Hot 100 longer than any song except a holiday song in the chart’s 68 years. Only Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ has more weeks at No. 1, with 22 collected over several Decembers since 2019.
Langley wrote the song with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert and Joybeth Taylor. It first reached No. 1 in February. In its sixteenth week, in August, country songs filled the whole top five of the chart for the first time.
The next chart comes out on Tuesday . It will show whether the song stays at No. 1 for another week. The Hot 100 mixes streams, radio plays and sales from each week. A song stays on top only while it is ahead of the No. 2 song, and that lead usually gets smaller week by week.
The Pattern
Thirteen of the 14 longest runs before it stopped short of 20 weeks. We looked at every song that spent 14 weeks or more at No. 1 on the Hot 100, using Billboard’s own records of where each run ended. The one song that went further is a Christmas song that adds its weeks each December.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History says long runs end, and this one has already gone further than all but one. For next week, though, the forecast is another week at No. 1. Runs this long usually end when a big new song comes out and goes straight to the top. In August country songs filled the whole top five, so the song has few rivals of its own kind right now. That is why the first market opens above 70%.
The weak point is the record itself. The four longest runs before this one all ended suddenly, close to where they stood, and each was ended by a new song that nobody expected a week before. Each extra week is a new test with a lower chance, which is why the 25-week market is below 30%.
Two things would decide it early. One is a big new song released in the week of 4 to . The other is a fall in the song’s streams, which Billboard said were still growing in week sixteen.
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