Since Ella Langley released “Choosin’ Texas” last year, she’s been breaking records left and right. She surpassed Taylor Swift for the longest-running country Number One, became the first female artist to top the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Country Airplay simultaneously, and took home seven ACM awards. And as she resumes her Dandelion headlining tour this weekend, she’s proving that she’s much more interested in being a first, not a last, by taking a string of fellow female artists out on the road.
Langley has recruited women to open for every date, choosing Gabriella Rose, Kaitlin Butts, Avery Anna, Laci Kaye Booth, and Madeline Edwards for the tour, which kicked off in May and concludes this August in, appropriately, Texas. But what’s even more notable is that while country music customarily prioritizes lower-risk openers for mainstream tours (read: successful on country radio), Langley seems intent to platform female artists regardless of whether they’ve made headway on the airwaves. Which, as we know, is not exactly an equal playing field. (Male country artists Dylan Marlowe and Kameron Marlowe are also on select dates.)
“Ella is such a role model for what skyrocketing with grace looks like,” Butts tells Rolling Stone, who credits Langley with changing her life when she posted a TikTok video using Butts’ “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)” trend. “She’s put me up for an acting role in her iconic music video for ‘Choosin’ Texas’ and now she’s taking me on tour with her. That’s what I love about her, a win for her means a win for all of us women in country music because she’s one of the ones that’s turning around to help the next in line.”
Everything in Langley’s world seems to be about paying tribute to those who opened doors for her, and how she can do the same in return. Dandelion was co-produced by Miranda Lambert, who also co-wrote “Choosin’ Texas.” It was Lambert (and Carrie Underwood) who first started to disrupt the mold of “balancing” a woman headliner with male acts: her 2019 Roadside Bars & Pink Guitar tours took out Maren Morris, Ashley McBryde, Elle King, Tenille Townes, and Caylee Hammack. Morris went on to do the same, recruiting Cassadee Pope, RaeLynn, Kassi Ashton, Hailey Whitters, and Tenille Townes for her GIRL World Tour. When country radio fails to budge — which, despite Langley’s success, still plays women around once an hour at best — such tour slots can make all the difference in helping to level the playing field.
“The strength it takes to be a woman at the top of this industry is almost unfathomable,” Booth says. “And the grace it takes to turn around and extend a hand to other women along the way is something extraordinary.”
Edwards, who had one of Rolling Stone’s best country albums of 2025 and will be an opening act on the Dandelion tour on July 16th, first met Langley at a songwriting festival in Maui a few years back, during one of the most vulnerable times of her life. Grappling with her brother’s worsening mental health, she confided in Langley. “I was disoriented, guilt-ridden, and far from home in the days leading up to his diagnosis,” Edwards says. “I’ll never forget the grace and space she offered a practical stranger as I tried to make sense of it all.”
Bringing women on the road is even more important in a summer where, according to the work of Book More Women, they’re barely represented on major country and Americana festivals. Tortuga is only 12.7 percent women, a decline from previous years; Under the Big Sky, Railbird, Tailgates n’ Tallboys, and Stagecoach all come in under 15 percent.
Edwards praises Langley for not just taking more women out on the road, but choosing women who “really have something to say,” notes Edwards. “She’s not just a ‘girl’s girl’ for the aesthetic of it. She’s curating a top-to-bottom experience that inspires her audience to really feel something. Real recognizes real.”
