Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' Holds Off 'Thriller' for a Record 27th Week at No. 1

The Billboard Hot 100 dated November 14 has a familiar name at the top. Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" is No. 1 again — for a 27th week, extending its own record as the longest-running No. 1 in the chart's history. Billboard reported the new chart on Monday, and the number it keeps landing on is the one that used to belong to Mariah Carey: Carey held this record at 22 weeks with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." Langley passed her in September. She has been adding a week to the gap ever since.

This week's challenge was a ghost. Halloween pushed Michael Jackson's "Thriller" from No. 20 to No. 2 — a new peak for a song that stopped at No. 4 in March 1984, more than four decades ago. For the first time in its life, "Thriller" led the Streaming Songs and Digital Song Sales charts outright. It still lost. "Choosin' Texas" held the top on balance rather than dominance: 18.8 million official streams, 53 million radio airplay impressions and 4,000 sold in the tracking week of October 30 to November 5, per Luminate data published by Billboard — first place on the Hot 100 while leading none of the chart's three component lists. Tame Impala and JENNIE's "Dracula," the week's other Halloween riser, reached a new No. 3 high and held No. 1 on Radio Songs. The spooky season won every battle underneath the summit and never touched it.

Put the reign in the chart's full history and the company gets thin. Since the Hot 100 began in August 1958, the longest runs at No. 1 now read: 27 weeks for "Choosin' Texas," then Carey's 22, then 19 apiece for Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" and Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road." A gap of five weeks over second place is not a record being chased. It is a record walking away.

The same week quietly moved a second Carey record. Her 1995 album Daydream produced three Hot 100 No. 1s — "Fantasy" for eight weeks, "One Sweet Day" with Boyz II Men for 16, and "Always Be My Baby" for two — 26 weeks at the top combined, the most any female artist's album had ever generated from its singles. Dandelion just passed it with 27. Langley got there with one song. Carey's mark needed three of the biggest singles of the nineties; Langley's needed a two-step she co-wrote with Miranda Lambert, Joybeth Taylor and Luke Dick, first released on October 17, 2025, and first No. 1 the following February.

The album around the single has kept pace. Dandelion, released April 10, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 169,000 equivalent album units — making Langley just the second woman ever to hold the No. 1 album and the No. 1 song in the country at once with a country album and song — and it went double platinum inside six months. It has produced four No. 1 singles, the latest being "Loving Life Again," which returns to No. 1 on Country Airplay on the November 14 chart for a second week at the top after earlier becoming the 1,000th No. 1 in that chart's history. "Choosin' Texas" itself spends a 48th week at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs, and it remains the only country song by a woman to have topped the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay at the same time.

What could end the run is the calendar, not a challenger. Langley plays the CMA Awards in Nashville on November 19, in the middle of the season when Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" starts its annual climb back toward the top of this same chart — the one serious rival left, and it arrives on schedule every December. The next chart, dated November 21, either prints 28 or closes the longest reign the Hot 100 has ever recorded. Either way, the number it has to beat now is hers.