How did Miranda Lambert's kangaroo lead to a chart-topping hit from Ella Langley? The ACM and CMA award-winning artists told us the origins of her smash, "Choosin' Texas," and also gave us a look at her upcoming album, Dandelion, during this week's Superstar Power Hour with Katie Neal.
LISTEN NOW: Superstar Power Hour with Ella Langley
"Choosin' Texas" has become an undeniable force, landing at number 1 on the Billboard chart and making history in more places than just Country music. According to Ella, it all started with a line from her executive producer and friend, Miranda Lambert.
Since Langley's first days playing with a full band, the singer had heard the story of Miranda Lambert owning a kangaroo and traveling with it on tour, even getting pulled over with it in the passenger sat. "I just remembered it, and every time I've ever seen her, I wanna ask about it, but I wait, I was like 'this isn't the right time and we're on the red carpet, you can't ask about that right now.'"
After writing with Miranda, Ella finally felt close enough to get the story. "We write one song and I was like, 'Oh no, we're homies, we're good.' I think I could say whatever I want to," remembers Langley. "So I straight up, I was like, 'Did you ever have a pet kangaroo at one time?' She goes, 'I did. I had a pet kangaroo,' and she literally rerouted places on her tour, because there were places that wouldn't have a kangaroo, she brought it out on tour."
"One day she was riding dirt roads and she had a dog in the back and a kangaroo in the passenger seat. She ended up getting pulled over on this dirt road and somehow talked her way out of this ticket," relays Ella. After the cop in the story exclaimed, "she's from Texas, I can tell," likely from Miranda's Texas plates on the back of her car, the phrase stuck with Langley. "That's kind of how I come up with a lot of songs, is it's really just in conversation and I'll say a phrase that I like, or something just catches my ear," she shares.
"When I said 'she's from Texas, I can tell,' you know, talking s*** on her, you know, the melody to my head just 'she's from Texas, I can tell by the way he's two-steppin' around the room,' sing it just like that, and Miranda was walking right behind me and said 'like the girl he went home with one he picked,'" she remembers. "We've all experienced a feeling like that where you're so into somebody and they're not in you, they're into somebody else way more than you and that sucks, so we really wrote to that feeling."
"I'll never forget, I was going to get a snack or go pee or something in the middle of the songs and said that line and we just went right into the porch outside and wrote it."
"The funniest thing people ask me like, 'and did you expect this?' I'm like, 'did I expect to make history? No.' You hope for the best, but you can't predict that," she says of the song's success. "You can love what you do and put out the best of what you got and that's exactly what we did. I think it's just because we put our heart in that song, and that's the theme throughout this record."
The ease of writing Dandelion for Langley has a lot to do with the confidence that comes with her success, knowing she made the right choice that changed her life. "I'm not guessing anymore. I'm not chasing anything. I'm not trying to be anything," she shares. "This record is exactly what I wanted out of it and it is just me, and I feel like this is gonna be my record where everyone's gonna be like, 'that's where the artistry clicked for her.'"
"None of these songs I felt like I was banging my head against the wall to get it written, you know, I genuinely was dancing around the room writing these they're so exciting. Then some of them are so heartfelt and really explain who I am as a person. I think if you have never heard an interview of mine, if you've never seen me live, don't know anything about me, you'd know about me if you'd listen to this record, it's so personal in that way."
To hear more from Ella Langley, check out the full interview above. Dandelion is out everywhere on April 10.