Ella Langley just scored her second number 1 on country radio "weren't for the wind." She stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about her career, and even address (kind of) those rumors.
When Langley was really young, her grandma put her in piano lessons. However, she kept trying to play the piano by ear rather than with the music and the teacher said she was too young to learn, so her grandma had to pull her out. It's Langley's biggest regret in her life, she wishes she would have stayed in or at the least picked it up again. She started playing her grandfather's guitar around 13-years-old, when he passed away. She knew her entire life that she wanted to do something in music. She had a cousin at one point in her life who worked at a dentist office and would make Langley get up and sing after her appointments. She also spent a lot of her childhood singing in church.
She joined a band right out of high school, and went to college at Auburn. Langley would play acoustic bars all over Alabama up until she dropped out of Auburn 2 years in, and moved to Nashville to pursue music full time. She moved in with 3 guys from Alabama, two of which were artists pursuing a career as well. Langley admitted it was like a frat house the first two years and her dad was not happy with her living arrangement. Besides a one-off trampoline place job in high school, Langley has always used music to pay her bills. She would do covers in bars all the time, her favorite one being "Here For The Party" by Gretchen Wilson, she started playing that one at 18. Despite living in Nashville, she's only played covers on Broadway one time and that was filling in for another artist.
Langley's first country tour was with Randy Houser, she opened and would play mostly covers in her set. She knows a lot of artists these days will do a live auto tune on their voice when they perform so it sounds more like the studio version of their voice, but she will never do that. She told an artist who was convinced she would start playing live shows that way that she thinks what's fun about seeing an artist live is the imperfections, them being human, and making mistakes. She's supposed to sound a little out of breath sometimes, or pitchy, because she's running around a stage and she doesn't want to take away from that for fans. In her career, Langley goes to Miranda Lambert for advice because she is someone who has always done what she's wanted to do, she is unapologetically herself, she does right by people, and follows her gut, which is exactly what Langley is trying to do in her career. She's also received some advice from Morgan Wallen about the things going on in her life lately, she was on the road with him last year and this year, and their bands are good friends. Langley is also a big fan of Kaitlin Butts, Bobby Bones recalled when Butts was in studio talking about Langley's video going viral with her song. Butts texted something similar to Langley, and she told Butts she is the one who wrote the song and it's a great song. She wants to help give other women the opportunity she's been given.
While listening to Lambert and Carrie Underwood's "Somethin' Bad," she had a realization that she's getting to be in the next generation of country artists and it's not something she takes lightly. She's been very deliberate in writing lately, as well as writing a little less because of her chaotic schedule now. She likes having other writers in the room with her, because she gets in her own head sometimes. Langley admitted she is better with collaborative things, which then allow her to picture a music video or movie when she's writing a song to see what it would look like or how it would play out. Writing for her is very therapeutic, sometimes she will write a song that instantly hits close to home, but then some she writes and they hit home at a later point her life. "Girl you're taking home" is like that for Langley, she shared the song is so personal for her now and has become an interesting one for her to sing. But that's also why she thinks fans like her music is because there is honesty within the lyrics.
As for her parents, Langley's parents are baffled all the time by her success. They have known this is all she's wanted to, and they have been great supporters of that, but her dad started to question when all the work was going to pay off. Now at this point, Langley is getting to treat her family and friends to things and has a voice so she can share the things she cares about with an audience that wants to listen. However, her dad was upset with her over every tattoo, the first one she got at 18-years-old particularly upset him. She got a Treble Clef, which she still can't read music so it had some irony to it, but once her dad saw it she thought was getting a butt-whooping at 18.
Her dad has also called her over seeing all the drama on Facebook and she's had to talk him off a few ledges about it. When Bones asked what percentage of all the rumor stuff is true, Langley said 10% on the low end, a lot of stuff coming out was fan fiction and she thinks more people got worked up then they all did.