Ella Langley‘s coming in hot with her second singe, “Weren’t for the Wind,” which hit radio earlier in January and is already in the top 40 of the country charts.
It’s the follow-up to her CMA Award-winning duet with Riley Green, “You Look Like You Love Me,” which as Ella recalls to ABC Audio “started out as a joke” in the songwriting room.
“The guy who I wrote it with originally … his name’s Aaron Raitiere. … And he’s just a buddy of mine, so he was like, ‘Hey Ella, how’s your relationship life going?’ You know, we were shooting the s***. And I was like, ‘Aaron, honestly, I’m at the point where they look like they love me, I got to get the hell out of there,'” Ella recounts.
“As songwriters, we’re kind of always listening for things,” she says. “And right as it came out of our mouth, both of us were like, ‘Oh, you look like you love me.'”
Ella’s musical influences span a list of country greats, and if you’ve heard the near-spoken word parts of her duet, you could probably tell.
“David Allan Coe[‘s] ‘You Never Even Called Me By My Name’ was probably like, that and [Merle Haggard‘s] ‘Mama Tried’ are my two favorite songs, and [John Conlee‘s] ‘Rose Colored Glasses’ were my first three favorite songs as a kid. And I knew that talking part at like 3 years old,” Ella shares.
“But also I grew up on Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck, you know, all these guys that did that, Waylon [Jennings] and the list goes on and on,” she adds. “So I just always wanted a song like that.”
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