Ella Langley Reveals How Miranda Lambert’s Pet Kangaroo Sparked The Idea For ‘Choosin’ Texas’

Ella Langley recently revealed the very unusual way a pet kangaroo helped spark the idea for her historic hit, “Choosin’ Texas.”

According to the rising country star, years ago she heard about the time Miranda Lambert got pulled over with her pet kangaroo in the car. Langley traced that story back to when she was 18 years old and had met a man named Scotch Taylor at what she describes as being “a redneck Top Golf” in Montgomery, Alabama. Scotch was the first person she had come across who had a connection to Lambert.

“He told me this story about her having a kangaroo and then getting pulled over with the kangaroo in the car. And I had so many questions about that,” Langley told Audacy’s Katie Neal. “And every time I’ve ever seen her, I wanted to ask about it, but I wait. I’m like, ‘This isn’t the right time. We’re on the red carpet. You can’t ask about that now.’”

She eventually grew a close enough bond with Lambert that she was able to ask her about that story during a songwriting session together.

“Straight up, I was like, ‘Did you ever have a pet kangaroo at one time?’ She goes, ‘I did. I had a pet kangaroo.’ And she literally rerouted places on her tour because there were places that wouldn’t have a kangaroo. She brought it on tour…she said one day she was riding dirt roads and she had a dog in the back and the kangaroo in the passenger seat and she ended up getting pulled over on this dirt road and somehow talked her way out of this ticket,” Langley explained.

She then joked that the cop likely could easily tell that Lambert was from Texas, not just from her Texas license plates, but also from the chaos unfolding in the car. Suddenly, the iconic line, “she’s from Texas, I can tell,” that we now know from the chart-topping hit fell out.

“That’s kind of how I come up with a lot of songs is it’s really just in conversation and I’ll say a phrase that I like or something just catches my ear.”

Within the span of an hour, the song came to life with Lambert throwing in her own ideas until the clever story was complete.

“We’ve all experienced a feeling like that where you’re so into somebody and they’re not in you, they’re into somebody else, way more than you and that sucks. So we really wrote to that feeling…I’ll never forget us getting the line, ‘He always loved Amarillo by morning.’ I’ll never forget her saying that. And we both went, ‘I should have taken that as a warning.’ And that easy, fell out. And it was just one of those kismet things. And I mean, we all love that song.”

“Choosin’ Texas” has become an absolute fan-favorite for country music lovers and beyond. It has made such waves that it rose to the No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making Ella Langley the first woman to lead the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay charts simultaneously. It also claimed the top spot of the Mediabase Country Audience, Billboard Country Streaming Songs chart, Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart, SiriusXM’s The Highway Hot 30 Countdown, and UK Country Radio.

Much like this beloved track, the Alabama native says just about every other song on her next album, Dandelion, came together effortlessly. Each of these songs also offer deeply personal stories that capture where she’s at in life right now, while intertwining elements of reflection and joy. A good example of this is an unreleased track titled “Lovin’ Life Again,” which she teased “might or might not be” the next single.

“I took some time off last year because I had to. I was just, it’s too much. It got too much. This job became too much. It became more important than me, more important than my health, more important than the human version of me,” Langley said. “I came back from that little break and I was hanging out with my friend Ernest and he asked how I was doing and he was somebody I talked to a lot about my mental health. Him and Miranda were my two last year, really. But I said, ‘Just like that, I’m back to lovin’ life again.’ And I mean, immediately we were both like, ‘Ooh.’ And the song just kind of fell out.”

From the very start, Langley says she knew what this album would look like. She had vision boards laid out, she had colors picked out, she knew the title, and all the songs eventually came together under that umbrella. As a result, she feels this will be the project where people listen to the songs and think, “That’s where the artistry clicked for her.”

“I love this record. I love making this record. I can’t wait to perform this record. It represents me in a way that I don’t think I have represented myself and the fact that I think it’s a little more feminine. I think it’s womanly,” she added.