Mega Monday: 'Choosin' Texas' Breaks the Non-Holiday Record Outright
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 20th week at No. 1, moving past a tie into sole possession of the longest non-holiday reign in Hot 100 history -- while the rest of the top 10 is the same chart this column already reviewed, with only Dracula and I Can't Love You Anymore swapping two spots.
By Song Reviews · September 7, 2026
What Mega Monday Is
Every Monday, Song Reviews takes the previous week’s Billboard Hot 100 top 10 and asks the one question a chart position can’t answer on its own: is the popularity deserved? Most weeks that means ten verdicts. This week it means one number, because the record at the top just stopped being a story about a tie.
This Week’s Chart
The Hot 100, week of September 5, 2026:
| # | Song | Artist | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choosin’ Texas | Ella Langley | 20th nonconsecutive week at No. 1 – now the outright record for a non-holiday song, alone at the top rather than tied. Given the full Feature Friday treatment already, not re-reviewed here. |
| 2 | Boston | Stella Lefty | 8.0/10 – holds at No. 2 for a second straight week. |
| 3 | I Knew It, I Knew You | Taylor Swift | 6.3/10 – holds at No. 3. |
| 4 | Been by Now | Morgan Wallen | 7.3/10 – holds at No. 4. |
| 5 | Hate That I Made You Love Me | Ariana Grande | 6.0/10 – holds at No. 5. |
| 6 | Dracula | Tame Impala & JENNIE | 6.4/10 – climbs from No. 8 to No. 6. |
| 7 | So Easy (To Fall In Love) | Olivia Dean | 8.0/10 – holds at No. 7. |
| 8 | I Can’t Love You Anymore | Ella Langley & Morgan Wallen | 7.6/10 – falls from No. 6 to No. 8. |
| 9 | Man I Need | Olivia Dean | 8.8/10 – holds at No. 9, still the best-reviewed record on the chart. |
| 10 | Be Her | Ella Langley | 7.8/10 – holds at No. 10. |
Is the Popularity Deserved?
Below No. 1, this is the same chart this column has now reviewed twice running – eight of ten positions unchanged, and the only movement is a seven-month-old Tame Impala/JENNIE collaboration trading places with an Ella Langley/Morgan Wallen duet, two spots in either direction. Neither swap changes a verdict already on the record: “Dracula” at 6.4 and “I Can’t Love You Anymore” at 7.6 are exactly as deserving of their positions this week as last, because nothing about either recording has changed – only which one a few more people streamed.
The real subject, again, is the top of the chart, and this week it actually moved. Two weeks ago “Choosin’ Texas” tied Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at 19 weeks. It now sits at 20, which is no longer a tie – it’s the outright longest run by a non-holiday song in the Hot 100’s 68-year history, with only Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (22 weeks, and only because the calendar hands it a fresh surge every December) still ahead of it. That distinction matters: a holiday song’s chart run is a scheduling artifact as much as a popularity contest, resetting to No. 1 on a predictable date regardless of anything released that year. “Choosin’ Texas” has no such calendar assist. Every one of its twenty weeks came from an open field.
Whether that twentieth week is “deserved” the same way its first one was is a fair question, and the honest answer hasn’t changed from two weeks ago: yes, on the strength of the record itself, which earned its Feature Friday treatment back in August and hasn’t gotten worse with repetition. But a five-week-and-counting freeze in the rest of the top 10 – the same eight songs, in nearly the same order, three chart cycles straight – is its own data point. A chart doesn’t usually let one record run this long unless the field underneath genuinely isn’t producing a challenger, and right now it isn’t. The song at No. 1 earned the record. The size of the record it’s earning also says something about how little new is actually arriving to stop it.
Hero image: “Choosin’ Texas” single cover art, SAWGOD Records/Columbia Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.