Long before Ella Langley recorded “Choosin’ Texas,” she was a teenager from rural Alabama with a big voice, a love of storytelling and an ambition that stretched far beyond the bars where she first performed.
Her path eventually led to Nashville, a debut album and a friendship with one of the artists who had influenced her years earlier: Miranda Lambert.
That relationship would help produce “Choosin’ Texas,” a song whose inspiration began with one of the strangest traffic-stop stories imaginable.
It involved Lambert, a dog, a police officer—and a kangaroo.
Ella Langley grew up around stories and songs
Langley comes from Hope Hull, Alabama, where music and storytelling were part of family life.
She told the Recording Academy that her father and grandfather were gifted storytellers. Family dinners could become loud gatherings where everyone talked, laughed and repeated familiar stories for whoever happened to be sitting at the table.
Langley was also singing constantly as a child.
Two of the earliest songs she remembers learning were “Amazing Grace” and the traditional folk song “Froggy Went a-Courtin’.” Years later, that childhood connection remained important enough for her to revisit “Froggy Went a-Courtin’” while creating her Dandelion album.
But knowing she wanted to sing wasn't the same as knowing how to build a career.
At 18, Langley was playing cover sets in bars and performing around Alabama and the Southeast. In 2019, she moved to Nashville.
There she encountered another challenge.
She needed to become a songwriter.
The pandemic changed her direction
Langley has said melodies came naturally to her, but she initially struggled to finish complete songs.
Then COVID-19 shut down live music about six months after she arrived in Nashville.
The timing could hardly have been worse for someone paying her bills through live performances.
Instead, the shutdown became an unexpected songwriting education.
Unable to continue her normal schedule of gigs, Langley spent her time writing. She has described the period as a blessing in disguise because it forced her to develop that part of her craft.
Her songwriting became intensely personal.
Rather than constructing an artificial country persona, Langley wrote about the confusion, relationships and mistakes of her early twenties. She has compared many of those songs to journal entries.
That straightforward approach became central to her music.
“You Look Like You Love Me” proved she could trust herself
Langley released the EP Excuse the Mess in 2023, followed by her debut album, hungover, in August 2024. She co-wrote every song on the 14-track album.
One recording proved particularly important.
“You Look Like You Love Me,” featuring fellow Alabama singer Riley Green, included spoken verses that gave the song an old-fashioned, almost cinematic quality.
Langley told Rolling Stone that her label initially wanted those sections sung.
She refused.
Langley later said the song's success created a new level of trust between her and the people around her.
That stubbornness would serve her well.
By the time she began creating the music that followed hungover, Langley had learned that some of her best ideas were the ones that didn't necessarily follow the expected formula.
Then came a writing retreat with Miranda Lambert.
Miranda Lambert had been important to Langley for years
Lambert wasn't simply another famous songwriter Langley happened to meet in Nashville.
Her music had mattered to Langley long before they worked together.
Langley has revealed that her family lost their house to the bank shortly after her 14th birthday. Around that difficult period, she heard Lambert's “The House That Built Me.”
The song hit hard.
Langley felt as though Lambert was singing about her own life.
Years later, the two women developed a creative relationship.
That makes what happened during the “Choosin’ Texas” writing session particularly meaningful.
The teenager who once found comfort in a Miranda Lambert record was now sitting in a room writing a song with her.
A kangaroo helped inspire “Choosin’ Texas”
“Choosin’ Texas” was written by Ella Langley, Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor during a writers retreat.
And the idea emerged from a wonderfully bizarre story.
Langley had heard about Lambert once being pulled over while traveling with unusual passengers.
Accounts of the story vary slightly in the number of dogs involved, but one detail remains wonderfully consistent:
There was a kangaroo in the vehicle.
Langley asked Lambert about the incident during the retreat.
As she imagined the police officer encountering this unmistakably Texan scene, a thought occurred to her: the officer must have known immediately that Lambert was from Texas.
That idea helped produce the phrase at the heart of “Choosin’ Texas.”
It was funny.
But the song they built around it wasn't really about kangaroos or traffic stops.
It was about wanting someone who ultimately wants something—or someone—else.
The song is about being the second choice
“Choosin’ Texas” tells the story of a woman watching a man gravitate toward another woman whose Texas identity seems impossible to compete with.
Langley is left alone, nursing the disappointment.
The Texas imagery gives the record personality, but underneath it is a much more universal emotion: wanting something that doesn't choose you back.
Langley explained that the feeling doesn't have to involve romance. Someone can experience it with a relationship, a career opportunity or virtually anything they've invested their heart in.
That observation is crucial to understanding the song.
“Choosin’ Texas” may contain cowboy imagery and Southern references, but the emotional story is much broader.
It's about rejection.
More specifically, it's about realizing that wanting something badly doesn't mean you get to keep it.
The production stays unmistakably country
“Choosin’ Texas” was released in October 2025 and later became part of Langley's second album, Dandelion.
Musically, the song doesn't attempt to disguise its country identity.
Rolling Stone has highlighted its use of steel guitar and mandolin, elements that reinforce the record's traditional character even as the melody remains immediately accessible.
That balance fits Langley.
Her music can incorporate rock energy and pop instincts, but she has repeatedly demonstrated an affection for older country traditions.
Her influences also stretch beyond country.
Langley has named Stevie Nicks as her biggest influence, particularly admiring the symbolism Nicks uses in songwriting.
That helps explain why apparently simple details matter in a Langley song.
A drink isn't necessarily just a drink.
Texas isn't necessarily just Texas.
The image can carry the emotion.
The video brought the story to life
“Choosin’ Texas” also received an ambitious official music video.
The video features Miranda Lambert, giving the song's co-writer a visible place in the world she helped create.
Actors Luke Grimes and Ava Phillippe also appear.
Including Lambert feels particularly appropriate.
Her Texas story helped spark the song.
Her earlier music helped Langley through a painful period as a teenager.
And by the time “Choosin’ Texas” arrived, Lambert had become both collaborator and mentor.
Their relationship would continue into Dandelion, with Lambert helping co-produce the album alongside Langley and Ben West. The two also recorded “Butterfly Season” together.
A song built from a real relationship
The best part of the “Choosin’ Texas” story may be how many pieces of Ella Langley's life eventually came together inside one song.
There is Alabama, where she learned about storytelling.
There is Nashville, where she learned how to turn those stories into songs.
There is Miranda Lambert, whose music meant something to Langley before the two women ever met.
And then there is that ridiculous kangaroo story—the kind of detail no songwriting committee could manufacture as convincingly as real life.
From that unlikely beginning, Langley and her co-writers found something much more human.
Sometimes you can give something your heart and still watch it choose another direction.
That's the real story behind “Choosin’ Texas.”
Discover more artists and songs on the CLE Radio Power 40.
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