If Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is the Song of the Summer, and much of the consumer press has already decided that it is, it will have major implications for both Country and CHR radio.
At this writing, “Texas” is in significant rotation on only one New York radio station, Hot AC WNEW (New 102.7), where it recently went to all-day airplay, and is just approaching 100 spins. It is not playing on CHR rival WHTZ (Z100), one of the format’s more successful outlets right now. After nine months, “Texas” is No. 8 CHR at this writing, but still with major-market holdouts.
That doesn’t matter to Rolling Stone, which has already not only named “Texas” the summer song but anointed 2026 “the summer of Ella Langley.” Or the Washington Post, which used regional Spotify analysis to call everywhere except New York, Florida, Los Angeles, and Puerto Rico for Langley.
In New York, even with minimal airplay, “Choosin’ Texas” has been as high as No. 4 on the Spotify charts this week. It is currently No. 9 because of Ariana Grande album cut streaming. Even Langley’s Country radio follow-up, “Be Her,” has been top 50 without any New York spins.
Last week, while I was in Nashville for Country Radio Seminar agenda committee meetings, Country songs comprised the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time. “Texas” was joined by two No. 1 songs that haven’t received pop airplay, by Morgan Wallen (“Don’t We”) and by Wallen and Ella Langley (“I Can’t Love You Anymore”).
The other two songs were shared with CHR. Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You,” broke simultaneously at CHR, Hot AC, and Country, the first time Swift had pursued airplay there in five years. There was also Stella Lefty’s “Boston,” a top CHR and Hot AC 20 hit by way of streaming, then Country radio, and not so different from some viral pop hits.
This week, with Grande’s Petal album impacting the Hot 100, those same songs are still five of the top seven, reshuffled slightly due to Grande’s title track and the rebound of her “Hate That I Made You Love Me.” With Langley’s “Be Her,” Country accounts for six out of the top 10.
In the early ’90s, proponents frequently suggested that Hip-Hop had become “the new rock and roll,” or at least more of the pop-music epicenter than what Top 40 played. And during that moment when Hip-Hop was the music of most self-respecting 16-year-olds, only the success of Country itself or radio’s burgeoning “New Rock Revolution” challenged it.
So, what does that make Country now, if the biggest record of the year by the most phenomenal artist of the last several no longer needs CHR’s full co-sign? There have been Country songs charting without pop airplay since even before Billboard opened the Hot 100 to all-format airplay, but at the outset, that meant “Write This Down” by George Strait going to No. 27 in 1999. Now, the streaming numbers that Wallen and Langley generate, as well as the weakness and relative paucity of CHR product, have raised that ceiling.
Right now, there’s no question about which format has the bigger footprint. Country’s overall share of national listening (5.9) is higher than Mainstream CHR (4.6), according to Inside Radio’s national Nielsen numbers. There are some markets, once friendly to the format, where I wonder why Country isn’t doing better, but CHR isn’t flourishing in most of those cities either.
Country still has a relatively robust relationship between the radio and label community. It also has more available music. There are 83 Country songs receiving 100x spins or more on the Mediabase chart this week. There are 61 CHR titles. Top 40’s usual phalanx of April/May song-of-summer contenders this year wasn’t just soft, it was almost nonexistent. And as with CHR in previous booms, the excitement in the Country format is also spurring some veteran acts to make their best songs in a while.
Those agenda committee meetings were punctuated by label showcases and by the Country Radio Hall of Fame induction dinner, which is a lot like being at CRS itself in terms of the programmers it draws. Last week, it was hard not to feel the excitement.
If you view the Hot 100 or Spotify as the arbiters of a “hit,” “Choosin’ Texas” is clearly that, but not everything from either radio format ticks both boxes. There are songs on both the CHR and Country airplay charts that do not make Spotify’s top 200 and/or are not on the Hot 100.
As a further measure of format influence, I also determined the average Hot 100 and Spotify rankings of every song on the top 15 of both the Country and CHR charts. (Songs that missed the Hot 100 were given 101 points; songs that missed Spotify’s rankings got 201 points.)
- Out of CHR’s most-played top 15, according to Mediabase, CHR had five songs that were not in Spotify’s top 200, but none that were not on the Hot 100 at all. (Sombr’s “My Body Isn’t Ready” is the lowest at No. 72.) The average Spotify position was No. 102; the average Hot 100 position was No. 28.
- Country radio still supports plenty of songs that don’t stream. Out of the top 15 most played, only four were in the Spotify top 200 when I did my calculations, although that is partially explained by two of the Ella Langley songs (“Texas” and “Be Her”) already having become recurrents on the airplay chart. The biggest Country-only hit, Bailey Zimmerman’s “Chevy Silverado,” is not in the top 200 streams. Five out of 15 Country radio hits are not on the Hot 100 as well. The average Hot 100 position for the Country top 15 songs is No. 57.
Regular readers know that I consider Country’s greater willingness to support “radio records” as a strength. Playing both those research-driven songs as well as those driven by streaming has given the format more product and a better balance. Streaming gave Country two superstars in Wallen and now Langley. It has been less reliable in producing core artists for CHR radio.
As anybody who listens to American Top 40 reruns knows, it’s been a long time since topping the Hot 100 meant having a big, probably multi-format record that everybody likes, with symmetric growth through the mass audience. These days, it measures silos — pop radio, Country radio, streaming. The Hot 100 is not an alternate-universe Country chart quite yet, but as those non-crossovers in the top 5 indicate, it’s the tallest silo.
When Country and CHR do intersect, songs have critical mass that it’s hard for any other airplay combination to duplicate. Most Country stations never stopped playing a significant amount of gold and recurrents, but their ability to provide lateral support is greater than any other format’s — Hip-Hop/R&B radio has been diminished in many markets; Alternative, Active Rock, and Mainstream AC are 90% gold-based in many cases. Even heritage Hip-Hop outlet KPWR (Power 106) Los Angeles recently lost chart reporting status for being largely gold-based.
In the moments before CHR’s late-’90s resurgence, there were indeed a few hits in most other formats that would now test for any Classic Hits station, despite some level of CHR resistance at the time. Mostly they were those songs with some CHR airplay, such as Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” which had similar Top 40 resistance in 1995.
As we saw with Country’s 2012-13 boom in younger listeners, its success no longer depends on Top 40’s weakness. If we believe that there will be a revitalized CHR — there always has been before, although this is one long doldrums — then the Classic Hits format of the future will probably show something similar. Not every Country-only hit will endure, but some will last vastly disproportionate to their pop airplay now. It’s not a bold prediction to say that “Choosin’ Texas” will be one of them.
