Mega Monday: 'Choosin' Texas' Is One Week From Tying Mariah Carey's Chart Record
Ella Langley's 'Choosin' Texas' logs a 21st week at No. 1, one week from tying 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' for the longest run in Hot 100 history, holiday songs included -- while Bruno Mars' 'Risk It All' quietly re-enters the top 10 seven months after release.
By Song Reviews · September 14, 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, like two weeks ago, it means mostly one number – because the record at the top is one week away from a piece of chart history that has stood for over three decades.
This Week’s Chart
The Hot 100, week of September 12, 2026:
| # | Song | Artist | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choosin’ Texas | Ella Langley | 21st nonconsecutive week at No. 1 – one week from tying Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (22 weeks) for the outright longest run in Hot 100 history. Given the full Feature Friday treatment already, not re-reviewed here. |
| 2 | Boston | Stella Lefty | 8.0/10 – holds at No. 2 for a third straight week. |
| 3 | I Knew It, I Knew You | Taylor Swift | 6.3/10 – holds at No. 3. |
| 4 | Hate That I Made You Love Me | Ariana Grande | 6.0/10 – climbs from No. 5 to No. 4. |
| 5 | Been by Now | Morgan Wallen | 7.3/10 – falls from No. 4 to No. 5. |
| 6 | Dracula | Tame Impala & JENNIE | 6.4/10 – holds at No. 6. |
| 7 | So Easy (To Fall In Love) | Olivia Dean | 8.0/10 – holds at No. 7. |
| 8 | Man I Need | Olivia Dean | 8.8/10 – climbs from No. 9 to No. 8, still the best-reviewed record on the chart. |
| 9 | Risk It All | Bruno Mars | 7.9/10 – new to this week’s top 10, re-entering seven months after its February release on the strength of its Spanish-language version. |
| 10 | Be Her | Ella Langley | 7.8/10 – holds at No. 10. |
Is the Popularity Deserved?
Below No. 1, this chart is nearly the same one this column has now reviewed three weeks running – the only real movement is Ariana Grande and Morgan Wallen trading two spots, Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” ticking up one more position on a streak that’s now lasted a month, and “I Can’t Love You Anymore” finally falling out of the top 10 entirely, replaced by Bruno Mars’ “Risk It All.” That’s a genuinely different kind of top-10 entrant than most of what cycles through this column – not a new single riding a debut-week streaming spike, but a seven-month-old album track that came back around on the strength of a Spanish-language version released in May, which is a slower and more deliberate kind of chart return than most songs manage. It’s deserved on its own terms: a well-executed genre swerve into bolero that earned a second look rather than manufacturing one.
The real story, again, is at the top, and it’s about to become the story regardless of what any individual song does. “Choosin’ Texas” sits at 21 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 – one more chart week away from tying Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at 22, the longest-running No. 1 in the Hot 100’s 68-year history, holiday songs included. That comparison matters more than it might first appear: Carey’s record resets to the top every December on a scheduling mechanism no other song gets access to, a guaranteed annual surge tied to the calendar rather than to anything happening in music that year. “Choosin’ Texas” has had no such assist. Every one of its twenty-one weeks came from an open field, against real competition, without a single day of built-in seasonal advantage.
Whether a 22nd week is “deserved” the same way the first one was is a question this column has now asked twice, and the honest answer hasn’t moved: yes, on the strength of a record that earned its Feature Friday treatment back in August and hasn’t gotten worse with a fifth straight month of repetition. But the fact that Stella Lefty, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Morgan Wallen have all now spent multiple weeks parked immediately behind it without dislodging it says something too – a chart doesn’t let one record run this long, this close to a 34-year-old record, unless the field underneath genuinely has nothing left to throw at it. Next Monday settles whether the tie actually happens. This week just confirms nothing currently on the chart is built to stop it.
Hero image: “Risk It All” single cover art, Atlantic Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.