Ella Lanley snuck up on me. I liked her debut LP Hungover, but it didn't make my top ten in 2024. I remember thinking that her vocals and the writing were "solid"—excellent really—but not amazing or even extremely memorable. Sorry about that, really. I didn't realize.
This year she's taken over. Her song "Choosing Texas" has spent over 20 weeks at #1, hitting both pop and country charts. It's the biggest country hit in a while, and definitely one of the biggest ever by a female solo artist. So the "bro" period, which featured no women near the charts for years on, is way over. It also signals this: country’s in a new golden age. Enjoy it, because they never last. Langley has a number of songs on the current chart, and at the moment that chart features many fine songs.
Country music has gotten a lot better for years, featuring (1) a return to traditionalism, particularly in an early-1990s style (think Zach Top), (2) syntheses with hip-hop (including the work of the redoubtable Jelly Roll, for example), and (3) pop stars such as Beyoncè taking a dip. It's been a fun period, though eclectic and of mixed quality (I definitely didn’t feel that Bey album, e.g.). But the total arrival of Langley signals something else.
Choosing Texas isn't what I would’ve expected from a transcendent hit. I'm still going with "solid," but now adding "ultra" or some such prefix. The vocals aren’t volcanic, operatic or ornamented, or technical in any way. The arrangement is relatively simple and straightforward. It doesn't feature a big obvious hook. It's traditionalist without being annoying about it, or just as a matter of a basic identity with no defensiveness. It's not a manifesto for anything. It's just an excellent country song about jealous love. And it's outselling everything.
It signals, I think, that the post-bro neo-neo-trad period is fully in effect: fully secure, not worried about its own status, sure that it's exactly right for right now, which it is. Trad country music, though you can simulate it with AI prompts, is still the opposite of AI. It's dandelions all the way down. (And remember this one, from just pre-bro?) The album (also Dandelion) just came out, and it’s like that: solid, mature country music by a 26-year-old woman.
When a boomer like me thinks about female country, he may well think first of Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton. Tammy and Dolly were or are amazing singers, completely distinctive: Tammy achieved the most volcanic passion ever put on record; Dolly has the loveliest voice you ever heard, a delicate porcelain, pure and perfect. Loretta wasn't like either of those: just a kickass woman, a solid singer, and an historic songwriter.
Now, if I'm thinking about spectacular female Gen Z country singers, first there’s Carter Faith, who can do both Tammy's brokenness and Dolly's perfection. But Ella Langley sings every song directly, without ornamentation or affectation of any kind. She's not showing you what a very great singer she is; she's directly expressing the lyric in a forthright manner. There's not even much vibrato; she just wants you to hear the song. When she portrays herself as having come up playing the piano and singing with her grandpa in Hope Hull, Alabama, you believe it, because you hear it.
That she wants you to hear these songs clearly makes sense, because the writing has improved since Hungover, where it was already good. Here, she writes the way Nashville writes now: the artist, along with major collaborators, meet in a room somewhere and hash out songs. On Dandelion, she writes, among others, with Luke Dick, Aaron Raitiere, and Miranda Lambert. Speaking of Miranda, the undoubted queen of 2005-2020 country, she’s listed here as executive producer and is featured on the lovely Butterfly Season ("I've been drinking less and I've been thinking more. Been wanting different things. That's what Spring is for.")
That amounts to a kind of authorization for Langley, an anointment, we might say. In another anointing moment, Langley covers Kitty Wells' "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels," the most basic female country song. Langley's reading is... perfect. Kitty was similarly straightforward, and I think all veteran country fans should find it very reassuring.
But that cover is the only one, and there are great or possibly-classic original songs lurking throughout this 18-cut track list, including items like "Most Good Things Do," "We Know Us," or "I Gotta Quit," for example. They all have a real Miranda-like craft and punch. I particularly love the beautiful gospel-tinged Speaking Terms, the story of a spiritual crisis.
Anyway, if there's a better country album this year, I'll be surprised, but I'll be playing it all the time if I can ever stop pressing play on Dandelion.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on Twitter: @CrispinSartwell