2024 was the year Ella Langley blew up. First, she and fellow Alabama native Riley Green went viral with their cheeky duet “You Look Like You Love Me.” Releasing her debut album, Hungover, Langley found further success with “Weren’t for the Wind,” off the album’s deluxe re-issue, and another Green collab, “Don’t Mind If I Do.” The ACM’s reigning New Female Artist of the Year, 26, has warned fans they may have to wait awhile for her sophomore release. Until then, however, they can catch Langley singing all their old favorites on her Still Hungover Tour. During a recent stop in Texas, the five-time ACM Award-winning artist dusted off an old Kitty Wells classic for the crowd.
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Ella Langley Is “Bringing True Country Music Back” With This Flawless Performance
Growing up in Hope Hull, Alabama, Ella Langley was reared on classic country music, citing Conway Twitty, Johnny Lee, and David Allan Coe as influences. During an Oct. 17 show at the John T. Floore Country Store in Helotes, Texas, the rising superstar honored the first woman to ever reach the top of the Billboard country charts all on her own.
Strumming along on her guitar, Langley broke out into a rendition of Kitty Wells’ 1952 hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women / It’s not true that only you men feel the same, she sang. From the start most every heart that’s ever broken / Was because there always was a man to blame.
Appropriately, Langley then segued into a cover of Patsy Cline’s 1957 breakthrough hit “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Wells paved the way for artists like Cline, and both women blazed the trail that Langley now walks.
Fans Call For Album of Classic Country Covers
Footage of the performance caught fire on social media, with one TikTok user declaring that Ella Langley was “bringing true country music back.”
“kitty wells is smiling down from above along with Patsy Cline,” another fan gushed on TikTok. “Ella is amazing.”
Decades before Ella Langley would charm audiences, Kitty Wells was considering retirement. The Nashville native had grown frustrated with the various obstacles women faced in the industry at the time. In 1952, she agreed to record “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” mostly for the paycheck. The song, a blistering rebuttal to Hank Thompson’s 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life,” spent six weeks atop Billboard’s country charts.
“Women never had hit records in those days. Very few of them even recorded. I couldn’t believe it happened,” Wells later said of her success.
Featured image by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for ABA
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