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March 3, 2026

Choosin’ 9 songs about Texas

9 songs, 32 min 13 sec

	By Lindsay Zoladz

Ella Langley Seth Herald/Reuters

Dear listeners,

Here’s a fun bit of trivia about the latest Billboard charts: This week marks the first time in history that the No. 1 album and the No. 1 song in America are both by female country artists. “Cloud 9,” the latest LP by the self-professed “emo cowgirl” Megan Moroney, debuted atop this week’s Billboard 200, while “Choosin’ Texas,” the smash-hit breakup ballad by Ella Langley, returned to No. 1 on the singles chart. (Equally worth noting, if only slightly less historical, is the fact that both of these artists have been featured in recent installments of this newsletter.)

Moroney and Langley’s simultaneous success is especially heartening given country radio’s dubious track record when it comes to promoting female artists. In 2015, that tension came to a head when the country radio consultant Keith Hill referred to female artists as the “tomatoes” in the salad of country music, in a controversy that came to be known as “Tomatogate.” “The lettuce,” Hill added to this truly perplexing metaphor, “is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that.” Culinarily confusing as that statement was, it exposed the gender biases running rampant through country radio, where many programmers were discouraged from playing female artists back to back.

A decade later, though, Moroney and Langley are proving that there’s room at the top for more than one current queen of country. (That another female star, the great Miranda Lambert, is a co-writer on “Choosin’ Texas” only makes their shared success even sweeter.) And they’re doing so with markedly different styles — Moroney’s approach is a bit more contemporary and pop-oriented, while Langley is something of an old-souled traditionalist. There’s more than one way to be a woman in country right now, and none of them has anything to do with tomatoes.

I’ve been singing the praises of “Choosin’ Texas” since it was first released last year, so I decided to put together a Texas-themed playlist in honor of its return to the top of the Hot 100 — which happened on Texas Independence Day, at that.

Enjoy this collection of nine songs that mention Texas in their titles. Of course you’ll hear some country classics, from the likes of Tanya Tucker, Ernest Tubb and George Strait. But homages to the Lone Star State aren’t limited to a particular genre, so get ready to hear some blues and some indie-rock, too. And if your significant other can’t stop listening to “Amarillo by Morning”? Don’t say Ella Langley didn’t warn you.

Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Waylon and Willie and the boys,

Lindsay

Listen along while you read.

1. Ella Langley: “Choosin’ Texas”

Though every note of “Choosin’ Texas” is drenched in melancholy, the origin story of one of its key lyrics is actually hilarious. While working together at a writing retreat, Miranda Lambert told Ella Langley about a time she was pulled over with her pet kangaroo in the back seat. Lambert quipped, “Of course I have Texas plates on the back of my car.” Langley jokingly replied, “She’s from Texas, I can tell” — before realizing that’s a pretty good line for a country song. The rest is history.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

2. Ernest Tubb: “Waltz Across Texas”

This dreamy, 1965 Lone Star State reverie was a late-career hit for the honky-tonk legend Ernest Tubb, who was nicknamed “the Texas Troubadour.” It’s since been covered by countless country artists, including another beloved Texas troubadour, Willie Nelson, on his appropriately titled 1968 album “Texas in My Soul.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. Beyoncé: “Texas Hold ’Em”

Houston’s own Beyoncé kicked off her “Cowboy Carter” era the night of Super Bowl LVIII, when she surprise-released two country tracks, the soulful ballad “16 Carriages” and this boot-stomping invitation to line dance, which eventually hit No. 1 on the Hot 100. Despite some country stations refusing to play “Texas Hold ’Em,” the song debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to top that chart. Said the accomplished folk musician Rhiannon Giddens, who plays banjo and viola on the hit, “I used to say many times as soon as Beyoncé puts the banjo on a track my job is done. Well, I didn’t expect the banjo to be mine.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. Mitski: “Texas Reznikoff”

Inspired by a sojourn in Texas’s capital and the work of the poet Charles Reznikoff, this leadoff track from the indie singer-songwriter Mitski’s scrappy 2014 breakout album, “Bury Me at Makeout Creek,” culminates in her crooning to a lover, “You’re the breeze in my Austin nights.” (Incidentally, Mitski hearkens back to this earlier, blown-out guitar sound on much of her new album, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” which I’ve been listening to quite a bit since it came out last week.)

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. Waylon Jennings featuring Willie Nelson: “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”

Waylon Jennings immortalized a tiny town in central Texas — and in some sense, the entire outlaw country movement — in this 1977 hit about rejecting the trappings of wealth and embracing a simpler, more independent-minded lifestyle. Though “Luckenbach, Texas,” which was penned by Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons, became one of Jennings’s signature songs, he didn’t much care for it: “He didn’t like the fact that he was going to sing his own name in a song,” his son Shooter Jennings once told Rolling Stone. Still, that self-referential mention certainly helped mythologize the outlaw spirit of “Waylon and Willie and the boys.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

6. Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble: “Texas Flood”

The Dallas-born guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan named his 1983 debut album with Double Trouble “Texas Flood” after a blues number by Larry Davis, and included his own blistering take of it on the LP. The track became a live staple for Vaughan — and sometimes it even became an opportunity to shred with his guitar behind his back, Jimi Hendrix style.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

7. Pavement: “Texas Never Whispers”

Even slackers get the blues. This cryptic, characteristically abstract tune from “Watery, Domestic,” a 1992 Pavement EP that I happen to love very much, finds Stephen Malkmus advising, “Don’t hold your breath too long, this tunnel is a Texas mile.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

8. Tanya Tucker: “Texas (When I Die)”

“When I die, I may not go to heaven / I don’t know if they let cowboys in,” sings the Texas-born Tanya Tucker on this 1978 country hit, which later became the Dallas Cowboys’ touchdown celebration song. By the end, the track has transformed into a rowdy barroom singalong, with a rambunctious crowd of backing singers completing that chorus couplet: “If they don’t, just let me go to Texas, ’cause Texas is as close as I’ve been.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

9. George Strait: “Amarillo by Morning”

Finally, I almost closed this playlist with George Strait’s cheeky 1987 hit “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” but I chose instead to go with this other Strait song, just because Langley name-checks it in “Choosin’ Texas.” (“He always loved ‘Amarillo by Morning,’ I should have taken that as a warning,” she sings. Hindsight is 20/20, Ella!) A finely detailed lament sung from the perspective of a lonesome rodeo cowboy, “Amarillo by Morning” was co-written and first recorded in 1973 by Terry Stafford, but Strait’s more traditionalist 1982 version cemented its status in the pantheon of classic country ballads.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

The Amplifier Playlist

“Choosin’ 9 Songs About Texas” track list
Track 1: Ella Langley, “Choosin’ Texas”
Track 2: Ernest Tubb, “Waltz Across Texas”
Track 3: Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ’Em”
Track 4: Mitski, “Texas Reznikoff”
Track 5: Waylon Jennings featuring Willie Nelson, “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”
Track 6: Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, “Texas Flood”
Track 7: Pavement, “Texas Never Whispers”
Track 8: Tanya Tucker, “Texas (When I Die)”
Track 9: George Strait, “Amarillo by Morning”

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