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THE BIGGEST SONG IN AMERICA STARTED WITH A KANGAROO RIDING SHOTGUN. At a writing retreat in October 2024, Miranda Lambert told the room a story from her younger years: she once got pulled over with Texas plates on her vehicle and her pet kangaroo in the passenger seat. Ella Langley answered with a line aimed straight at her: “She’s from Texas, I can tell.” That line grew into “Choosin’ Texas.” And Miranda never left the song’s side — she co-wrote it with Ella, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor, co-produced it with Ella and Ben West, and sang backup on the record itself. Released in October 2025, it has now spent 13 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, one of only five songs by women without male-billed acts ever to do that, and the first non-holiday song to reach the milestone since Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” 21 years ago. This week, Luminate’s midyear report crowned it America’s most-streamed song of the first half of 2026, with 570.9 million streams. On July 11, Miranda headlined the Big Week Kick Off Concert in Salinas, with Ashley Cooke and Dylan Scott opening the night, and the song has ridden along in her shows all year. When she sings it, she isn’t borrowing Ella Langley’s hit. She’s singing a story that was hers before it was anyone’s — truck, Texas plates, kangaroo and all.
The Kangaroo Story Behind Ella Langley’s Biggest Hit Sometimes a song starts with a hook. Sometimes it starts
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