Long before Ella Langley was smashing records held by Taylor Swift, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey, her grandfather Roy would sit his baby granddaughter atop his piano in rural Alabama and play.’She heard the vibrations,’ Ella’s aunt Ruth Meek told the Daily Mail. ‘The vibrations are just part of her soul. Those two really loved each other.’More than two decades later, Langley, 27, is suddenly the hottest woman in country music.Her monster hit, ‘Choosin’ Texas’ has spent 17 weeks at No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making Langley the longest-running solo female artist atop the chart for a non-holiday song.But her dizzying ascent overwhelmed her to the point where she abruptly canceled shows last August and retreated home to Alabama.’This is a girl who grew up on a red dirt road,’ Meek said. ‘She’s not faking it. So it’s not surprising she had a bit of an identity crisis in Nashville.’ Ella Langley, 27, became the first woman ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts simultaneously, thanks to her Dollyesque hit Choosin’ Texas Langley credits her childhood for developing the musical talent that has captivated fansLangley told fans she’d become run down and needed to care for her ‘mind, body, and heart,’ and has since spoken openly about depression, which she calls a ‘family disease,’ and the impostor syndrome, a fear of being exposed as a fraud, she felt as her career exploded.Now the Daily Mail can reveal that Langley has put down roots in the place where she went to escape the pressures of Nashville, buying a secluded waterfront home on Alabama’s Lake Jordan almost next door to her parents.The break back home paid off, inspiring one of the most personal songs on her new album, ‘Dandelion.’Langley, who got a publishing deal in Nashville as a songwriter before her record deal, said the tune ‘Loving Life Again’ grew out of the weeks she took off to ‘re-find’ herself and reconnect with God.’Dandelion’ is bookended by the old folk song, ‘Froggy Went A-Courting,’ that she used to sing alongside her grandfather.Langley also released old footage of them singing together when she was a child.And the people who knew Langley before the fame say her return to Alabama was crucial to her enormous burst of success this year.’I saw what happened,’ her former high school teacher Maury ‘Coach Pop’ Popwell, 78, who taught her guitar, told the Daily Mail. Years before Nashville came calling, teenage Ella – born Elizabeth Camille Langley – was already making herself heard around Hooper Academy in Hope Hull, Alabama, where she graduated in 2017 Though she was described as having been a ‘tomboy’ who liked to hunt and fish as a child, Langley was also a two-time state champion in dance’She came back here and turned back to God and now she’s really taken off.’Meek said Langley needed to ‘reground and regroup and get rooted’ back home.Those roots stretch back through generations of the Langley family.At reunions, Meek remembers ‘little bitty Ella’ invariably turning up with a guitar, singing and performing for relatives.In an old family video Meek recently dug up, a toddler Ella can be seen wandering through the 50th anniversary celebration of the tiny Alabama church near Brantley that her great-aunt helped establish, singing and making noise.’To me, that was Ella’s first concert in church,’ Meek said.Langley grew up as one of four children in a modest house in Hope Hull with a barn amid rolling pastures south of Montgomery, where she used to sing to cows.The family at times struggled financially. Maury ‘Coach Pop’ Popwell, who spoke to the Daily Mail from his Marbury, Alabama home, taught a teenage Langley to play guitar in early-morning lessons at Hooper Academy A brunette teenage Langley was voted ‘best dressed’ by her peers in high school The high school senior was escorted across the football field with her fatherMeek said the Langleys of Roy’s generation had little money for entertainment or formal music lessons.’When you’re that poor and you don’t have access to much of anything and no one has a car, the family just made music together,’ she said.On Saturdays during Roy’s childhood, people from the tiny surrounding community would bring their instruments and gather to play and sing.’They all play by ear,’ Meek said. ‘If one member in the family could afford a piano lesson or guitar lesson, your job was to then teach the other four.’Roy died in 2012, years before he could see where that talent would take his granddaughter.After being homeschooled for years, Langley enrolled in Hooper Academy in Hope Hull and found another musical mentor in Popwell. According to the family, ‘They all play by ear,’ Meek said. ‘If one member in the family could afford a piano lesson or guitar lesson, your job was to then teach the other Hooper Academy sits amid the quiet countryside south of Montgomery, a world away from the packed arenas Langley now playsLangley showed up in his classroom before 7.30 every Friday morning where he taught her guitar.’She could not play very well when she started to come to me,’ Popwell told the Daily Mail.But she kept coming.’She worked and worked at it. She was just one of these people that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”She was singin’ all the time, outside the school doors, anywhere she could,’ Hooper Academy staffer Judy Reeves told the Daily Mail.’She was a tomboy when she was younger and she hunted and fished, but she was also a two-time state champion in dance. The boys sure liked her.’ Her road to stardom began here, at the family’s modest home in Hope Hull, where Langley grew up among rolling pastures and, according to her family, sometimes practiced singing with cows The Langleys sold their home and moved out to Lake Jordan (pictured) this spring, where the singer retreated to escape the pressures of NashvilleLangley graduated from Hooper in 2017.Brittani Wilsford remembers recruiting the budding singer for an important gig.’She sang at my wedding when she was only 15!’ Wilsford told the Daily Mail.’Can you believe that? I never in a million years thought she’d wind up this big star.’Langley began playing at weddings, birthday parties, golf courses and tiny bars like the now-defunct Bezlo’s Cafe near Lake Martin, where she played her first-ever show in August 2017.She initially spent two years at nearby Auburn University, joining the Phi Mu sorority and studying forestry in between a growing number of gigs in the Montgomery area.But while her sorority sisters were settling into campus life, Langley was increasingly focused on music. After two years, she dropped out and followed musician friends to Nashville.Local guitarist Aaron Brooks, who played with Ella’s first band back in 2019, was the rare person from her past who declined to comment other than saying he had ‘nothing positive’ to say, explaining to the Daily Mail that Langley had told some ‘untruths’ about that early band on a podcast but did not elaborate. The comparisons between Langley and Taylor Swift – two Nashville-breakouts, seen here with Lainey Wilson – are inevitable Back in May, Langley’s song surpassed Swift’s 2012 hit We Are Never Getting Back Together for the most weeks at No 1 by a female country artistBefore leaving Alabama, Langley returned to see Popwell.Popwell remembered his 12-string guitar Langley had coveted years earlier.’I said, ‘Well, come by and see me before you go,’ and I gave her that 12-string guitar to take with her,’ he said. ‘I think she still has it.’What followed shocked everyone back in Hope Hull.Country music star Miranda Lambert, 42, who was on Langley’s inspirational vision board as a kid, became one of her biggest backers, co-writing ‘Choosin’ Texas,’ co-producing ‘Dandelion’ and bringing Ella onstage to perform Lambert’s ‘Kerosene’ at the 2025 CMA Awards, marking the 20th anniversary of the song.Langley’s love life has generated gossip, though she’s kept a tight lid on it.Her sizzling chemistry with Riley Green sparked romance rumors after their hit ‘You Look Like You Love Me,’ though both claimed they were just friends.She later had a brief relationship with ‘Farmer Wants a Wife’ star John Sansone.Langley has since described herself as single, joking that she is ‘married to my job.’But her job became so huge, she hit an emotional speed bump.’I think it just hit her so hard, she’s up there onstage with Miranda Lambert and Morgan Wallen and I think maybe she felt she didn’t deserve it,’ Popwell said.’I just can’t imagine being in front of all these thousands of people the way she’s doing now. I get a tear in my eye when I see her up there.’ Last year, Langley’s sizzling chemistry with Riley Green sparked romance rumors after their hit ‘You Look Like You Love Me,’ though both claimed they were just friends Ella Langley’s single Choosin’ Texas has now spent 14 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Her father has some roots on Lake Jordan, which locals call the ‘blue collar lake.”Ella and her family are the sweetest, kindest people,’ local realtor Dru Wilson, a longtime friend of the family, told the Daily Mail.’Her dad grew up on Lake Jordan. They decided to come back full time. I sold them both homes.’It’s a place where Ella can go and re-center and get some peace and write. This has been a lot for them but they’re handling it with grace and prayer.’I hope people give them respect and privacy because it’s been a lot.’Langley sometimes posts photos of herself jumping from rocks into Lake Jordan near Slapout, an unincorporated community said to have acquired its unusual name from an old storekeeper who would tell customers he was ‘slap out’ of whatever they wanted.Back in Hope Hull, a mailbox bearing Roy E. Langley’s name still sits on Richardson Road, where several generations of Langleys lived until they sold the home and moved out to Lake Jordan this spring.For Popwell, one moment brought home just how far the girl who used to appear in his classroom before school had traveled. Riley Green and Langley onstage at the 60th Academy Of Country Music Awards held in Frisco, Texas in May 2025 Heavy bangs are now her trademark – along with her evolution towards a Stevie Nicks-influenced 1970s chicYears after he gave Langley his guitar and watched her leave Alabama for Nashville, she invited her former teacher to join her onstage at a Birmingham concert.Then she handed him a microphone and told him to sing Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog.”She just gave me a microphone and said, ‘Sing,’ he recalled. ‘And I did.”It felt really good to be part of what she was doing, and to know how far she had come from when we started.’Popwell said he sometimes tears up when he watches Ella perform.’I didn’t know that she would get this big,’ he said. ‘I really didn’t. But I never doubted her.’The Daily Mail reached out to Langley and her family for comment.