Today, Explained - The pop girlies are sad

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Ella Langley’s heartbreak anthem “Choosin’ Texas” is ruling the charts in this sad girl summer we’re having. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Avishay Artsy, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. Ella Langley performs at CMA Fest 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some people have been arguing for a while now that the song of the summer is no longer a thing. Monoculture is dead. There are many songs of the summer. It depends on who you hang out with. It depends on your Spotify. In the summer of 2026, people are still making that argument. But it is a little harder this year because of Ella Langley. Her shoes in Texas is breaking records, racking up Mariah and Whitney-type numbers,

although you might never have heard this song. Maybe instead you're listening to Charlie or Gracie or Ariana or Kim. Your mama thinks I'm bad for you. But eagle-eared music fans have noticed something. A lot of this summer's biggest albums, biggest songs are, like Choosing Texas, kind of gloomy, a little grim, a bit sad. What is going on? Coming up on today, Explain from Vox, the pop girlies, sad, sad, summer.

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and what to do about it. AI on, risk off. Vanta.com slash TPRM. You're listening to Today It's Play. Your home for country music. Wait, is that right? Yep. I'm Noelle King with Marissa Moss.

She's a senior writer at Rolling Stone. It's a lot about country. All right, Marissa, tell me about Chooze in Texas. Choose in Texas is a song about a woman who is essentially losing her man in real time. So she goes to a bar, honky tonk in Texas. She's from Tennessee. She suddenly realizes that he sees his, I guess, his ex who's from Texas and drifts away from her to this woman. So it's that feeling of kind of knowing when you see it in someone's face that they're going to be leaving you.

And you're figuring out whether it's worth it to hold on or you just kind of have to let go. How big is this song exactly? It is huge. It is up there right now in competition with Maria Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You, which owns the record for the most amount of weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with 22 weeks. So right now, Ella Langeley, as we speak, has 18 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. Dang.

Her only competition above that is Shabuzi. And Lil Nas X. Can't nobody tell me nothing. Which are also, you know, you should say, kind of country-ish, country-adjacent song. But she really could blow by Maria Carey. Of course, you get a boost every time Christmas comes around, but we're a little off from Mariah Carey declaring once and for all that it's Christmas season. So I think Ella has plenty of time to catch up. And it could be the biggest song of all time, which is

crazy. You're a music writer and you're based in Nashville, and Nashville is the beating heart of country in this country. How big a deal is Ella Langley in a place like Nashville and in the country industry? She's a big deal. And it's exciting because she's a relatively newish artist in terms of how long she's been putting out music. You know, she's been in the grind for years and years like most artists have by the time they have their breakthrough. She only released her debut album in 2024 called Hungover. And it's really exciting because, as a lot of people know or maybe they don't know, it can be really hard for a woman to make it in Nashville.

They're usually played, you know, one woman's song an hour on country radio, if that, if you're lucky. Usually under 10% of songs on country radio or by women. Wow. So having someone like her out there and having so much country radio airplay and presence on the Hot 100 and breaking all these records, you really hope that it's going to help influence people in Nashville to sign more women, platform more women, do all of those things to try to sort of flip this long-standing sexism

that has existed in Nashville. Not to put all of our hopes and dreams on one woman because it's not up to her to do this. It's up to the industry to respond. But, you know, you sure have to hope so. Was it a surprise that Choosing Texas became such a big hit? To me, and I am totally fine to admit this, I would have never predicted this. I love the song when I heard it. But I don't think I ever thought that something this country could be this popular.

And yes, country music is becoming so. much more popular nationwide, worldwide. But it is also country music in a lot of ways that is a little bit more pop-leaning. Morgan Wallen is extremely popular, but he's not putting out super twangy, you know, tears in your beers, kind of country music songs. Choose in Texas. Yes, I know it's kind of sad, but more than sad, I think it's relatable. It taps into this feeling that a lot of people have, and I guess, this.

especially in the summer if you're thinking about a summer romance or something like that, of losing something that you once have, of letting go, of nostalgia. I think that's something that we really want to feel right now. And despite the lyrical content, which may be a little bit of a bummer, the song does just feel so good. And it's like a little bit of like a brain weed gummy. The second it comes on and you hear that little guitar lick, it relaxes you. It sort of gives you that summer feel.

of like just airy and fresh, and a lot of people want to feel that way right now. But, I mean, there's been remixes of the song at the club. You've said she's not a person who shares a ton about herself. Probably smart in this day and age. But country music often does get politicized, and I've seen that happening a bit around her and around this song. Tell me about the way she is being slotted into certain perspectives in the U.S., whether she wants to be or not.

So one thing I've seen is a lot of people from the far right wanting to use her as an example of a return to sort of this anti-girl boss era. Ella is MAGA. American flag emoji, American flag emoji. True country patriot princess, who I will forever support and I would die for. Ella Langley wrote a wholesome anti-woke country song

and it's about to beat the record for longest time spent as number one on the Hot 100. America is healing. They like to take the fact that she speaks about her faith on stage and sort of warp that into that being sort of her overriding agenda and that she wants this return to traditional values. And then on the left, I've seen some people sort of play with the same. I personally think you could easily just as well. easily make a case that she's a feminist who had Miranda Lambert, you know, produce her album and writes with women and takes all these women on tour.

If we're just talking about women right now, it takes women like Lainey, Miranda and me and all these artists that are coming up to stand up and be like, oh, we're not going to put up with this. You know, so many people want this moment to serve their own narrative and want Ella Lingley to stand for something on every side. And if you don't get it. If people little, they're going to go wild. But maybe that's better than putting your personal views out there and having them ripped apart. So I can't say I really blame her, to be honest. This is a sad song.

And I get you on like, it's a very chill vibe. And it definitely does ease the brain in some ways. But when you think about it, it's like, my fella fell in love with someone else. And so here's a theory I've heard. The summer of 2026 has a lot of sad girl music coming out, and this just sort of fits into a broader trend, for some reason, this summer, of sad music. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that's fair.

Obviously, sad is a universal emotion. But I think when people hear this song, they recognize themselves in it. And I don't know if it conjures so much sadness as much. of like a communal experience, like this sense of, oh, okay, I'm not alone. Other people have experienced the same thing. And I don't know if people are putting it on and crying, you know, into their lap the same way that people are for other sort of sad girl summer records. Maybe if your partner just left you for someone in Texas, you might cry.

But, you know, I don't know if it elicits that kind of. visceral reaction. I think it's more of like a gut feeling, a vibe kind of situation. That was Rolling Stones, Marissa Moss. Marissa wrote a book. It's called Her Country, How Women in Country Music became the success they were never supposed to be. When we come back, the pop stars are sad this summer. What's bothering him? Support for this show comes from JustWorks.

Small business owners love to roll up their sleeves and get things done. But that doesn't mean you should spend your Saturday night staring at tax and payroll forms, especially when you should be strategizing your next move. That's why JustWorks handles the stuff you can't afford to get wrong. It's intuitive software plus real people, all working to help keep your eye on the big picture. So instead of stretching yourself thin, you can focus and shoot your small business shot because you don't have to worry when it just works. Head to JustWorks.com to learn more.

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Alex writes for Vogue. Alex, we've been told that this is the summer of the sad girl song and the sad girl album. Which of the girls have been saying? this summer? Sure. Well, Olivia Rodriguez would be a good place to start because she literally has the word sad in the title of her album. It was just something that my producer, Dan, said to me, we were having a conversation about just stuff in my life and he's like, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. And when he said it, we were both like, that's it. That's a title. We've been searching for it for so long. It's also my favorite album of the summer so far. It's an album about

whatever is the opposite of carefree love. It's an anthems for anxious attachment is sort of how I've been thinking about them. So these are not late fun nights of June and July where the dance music is bumping. This is being in your room worried about what the other person thinks of you and whether or not you're happy in the relationship. I mean, it's sort of about the beginning of a relationship when, yes, things are great and you're feeling the spark and the chemistry and the excitement, but you're also worried about where it's going to go. Like you have a voice in your head that's telling you maybe this isn't right. Maybe this isn't real love. Maybe he doesn't like you the way that you think there's a couple ballads on the record, one called begged, one called

Les, that are absolutely heartbreaking. Nothing's quite enough when I know that to get it, I bet. I wish, I wish, I wish you were. But even the up songs like Maggats for Brains, which I think has become a fan favorite, is sort of about becoming almost zombified by love. and sort of what it does to you, how it transforms you, and almost makes you a Frankenstein figure. So it's a really interesting thing for a young woman to be exploring on a summer record.

You know, love we think of as happy or maybe we think of as breakup, but this is somewhere in between where you're in love, but you're not feeling super sure about it. Hmm. Phoebe Bridger's album, tell me about that one. It's got a song called Kill Me on it. So, I mean, you don't get, you don't get bleaker than that. Phoebe Bridgers is famous for making sad music. You know, it's interesting because she's balancing on the record sort of like the larger realities of sort of like the sadness of the culture and the country, but also like in her own personal. life, some good things are also happening. She's singing about weddings, but she's also singing

about the state of the world and how bad things seem at any given moment. In the government isn't trying to kill you. They just don't care if they kill you. I've been listening to Ariana Grande's record, and she's having a bit of a rough summer herself and sort of like leaning into a certain kind of misery with the industry, with her fandom. The opening single was Hate That I Made You Love Me, which is, again, having hate in the title is a pretty good indication that we're not in La La Land right now. But the rest of the record is sort of gets even bleaker. The joy of Ariana so often is in a karaoke moment when you can try to hit those exuberant notes along with her. Her voice

has an exuberance to it. And she's always had a little bit of sad. She's always walked that line. But here, there's really not much exuberance at all. We're just getting the sad, Ariana. listening with half an ear. I noticed that it is on the list of people's sad summer albums. Tell me what's going on there. I think that you're right in the sense that it's a little bit more complicated than sad, but, you know, very different than Brat and Mood, spring, summer 26, which I love. And the lyrics are, I mean, these are some serious lyrics. And the world is going to end no hope for anything. Yeah, we're walking on her. Save us. Not music, fashion, affair.

Feels like a very different direction for her considering the sort of exuberance of Brat summer, which was just a few short summers ago. So what is actually going on here? Like, is this a coincidence or is this a sad time, a sad culture, a sad country? What's the deal? I don't think it's a coincidence. I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on. One, I think we've been sort of moving in this direction for a while. I mean, I think when we think back about 15 years ago, the kind of pop that was on the radio was exuberant pop like Katie Perry.

And then Lana Del Rey had a song called Summertime Sadness that came out around then. Sort of like changed the paradigm a little bit for what a pop star can be. And I think what we're seeing now as a generation of young female songwriters who have sort of grown up in Lana's wake. And they're dealing with weighty issues the way that Lana does. They're dealing with the darker side of life the way that Lana does. And I don't want to give Vlana all the credit, but I do think she has caused a big sea change in how record labels can imagine young female singer-songwriters

to market themselves. The other thing I think is there's sort of two panics that I think might be related to this. One is the panic over AI and AI's role in music at a moment in which we're sort of concerned about sort of like perfection created by AI and by like a digital force, that we would sort of cling to songs that are bit messier and sadder, very emotional. You know, they're not sort of perfectly constructed, engineered pop marvels.

They're a bit more soft and broken and, dare I say, human. And the other is the panic over Gen Z sexlessness, which this has certainly become a cultural panic, right? And again, I don't know what's going on with Gen Z, but if you looked at the charts right now, this is not a sexy summer. Like, you would find some evidence that people are not having a good time, let's say. And so I think, like, there's a lot of things coalescing that sort of make it the perfect moment for sad songs. And I think it'd be really hard to sort of operate in the year 2026 and create music that has a sort of pure joyfulness. You wrote for Vogue that the best summer song is a sad one. That is a hard case to make. Can you

make it? I think some of the most powerful summer songs ever are really, really sad. If you're going through a rough time, it feels so much more amplified, in my opinion, in summer. And when I was writing the piece, there were just so many songs that I remembered from my youth and from younger days that really evoked sort of like the harder sides of summer. I love one that I don't think many people would construe as sort of like a modern summer song, but to me it is an incredible summer anthem, which is Joni Mitchell's Woodstock. That's a song about the Woodstock Festival, the famous one in the next. 1960s, but it's sung from the perspective of Joni who missed the festival. She was stuck in New York

doing work. Her manager would not let her go. Well, maybe it is just the time of year. Or maybe it's the time of Maddie's morning. And that seems very apropos of our time when you're sort of sitting in your office, but you're looking at Instagram and seeing people on vacation in Italy, and you're thinking, why am I not jumping off of the Amalfi Coast into the Mediterranean right now? What is going on here? Why is my manager making me stay here and I'm not at the proverbial Woodstock? So that's one I really love. What else?

Oh, we could talk about Taylor Swift a little bit. That might be a good one. Yes. The most important summer song that Taylor Swift has is one called August, which I think is a truly beautiful song. In it, she captures sort of something that's one of my favorite parts of summer, which is August, which is the month we're in right now. But I can see it's lost in the memory. August lived away into a moment in time, because it was never my. I sort of love that kind of wistful feeling at the end where you're already feeling a sense of nostalgia for the summer you just had. I'm already going through the memories that I had from June and July, and I'm already sad to see them go,

and I'm starting to think about a more serious season in September happening. I mean, it not only sort of is about that, it sounds like it. I mean, this is a song that sounds like salt air and rust, two things that she sings about. That sort of oxidized quality of summer. I love that kind of Cape Coddy wistful end of summer feeling when you know you only have a few weeks left or a few days left. And so you really appreciate it in a totally different way. But that in and of itself can be kind of sad. Meet me behind the mall is a line that just does me in.

I don't know what it is about August. That song also just hits so hard for me. God, yeah. God, I love it. So, 2026, what's your, what is your song of the summer this year? There's so much debate over what the real one is. Let me get your opinion on that, Alex. If you're asking from a cultural zeitgeist point of view, to me there's no question that it's Ella Langley's choose in Texas.

I mean, this song has been a behemoth. In terms of my own personal life, I keep coming back to Olivia Rodriguez. Every time I sort of step away from that record, I find myself pulled back and pulled back. And it's funny because just yesterday I had her song begged, which is, again, a really heartbroken ballad. It's just on loop, on repeat. And I'm in a good mood. But something about this summer has lent itself towards that kind of sort of, I don't know, sad wistfulness. Alex Frank is a contributor to Vogue.

Ariana Espudu produced today's show. Abashai Artsy was our sad girl editor. Gabriel Dunnit have checked the facts and David Tadishore and Patrick Boyd engineered. The rest of the team includes Heidi Mwagdi, Miles, Brian, Peter Balinan, Rosen, Danielle Hewitt, Kelly Wessinger, Dustin Dissoto, and Sean Ramos. firm. Our supervising team is Amina El Sadi and Jolie Myers. Marita Kennedy's the EP. We use music by Brickmaster Cylinder. Today explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network for more showspodcast.voxmedia.com. You can listen ad-free by going to Vox.com slash members. Support for this show comes from JustWorks. Small business owners love to roll up their

sleeves and get things done. But that doesn't mean you should spend your Saturday night staring at tax and payroll forms, especially when you should be strategizing your next move. That's why JustWorks handles the stuff you can't afford to get wrong. It's intuitive software plus real people, all working to help keep your eye on the big picture. So instead of stretching yourself thin, you can focus and shoot your small business shot because you don't have to worry when it just works. Head to JustWorks.com to learn more. How many third-party vendors does your company use? 20, 200?

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