You look like you love me

"We were in a write and he was like, 'So how's your relationship life going?' and I said, 'Honestly, I'm at the point where if they look like they love me, I just got to get out of there.' And he was like, 'That's a great song title.'"

(Ella Langley / billboard.com, August 6, 2024)

In 1802, Methodist circuit rider Hope Hull settled in the town of Athens and founded the first Methodist church in the US state of Georgia. The church building was nothing more than a crude log cabin with a chimney. 75 years later (in 1877) and around 240 miles further south in the state of Alabama, a train station along the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad was named Hope Hull in his honor.

In May of 1999 Elizabeth Camille Langley was born there. She started singing in church at an early age: "My mom's trying to help me with the microphone and I'm three years old, and I'm like, 'I got it. I know how to do it'", she later recalled on billboard.com. Soon she began to use social media in addition to her performances to realize her dream of a music career.

When she eventually moved to Nashville in 2019, she called herself Ella Langley and started to make a name for herself with small gigs and typical relationship songs that she wrote. In 2021, she released her first song ('If You Have To'), which got production credits from renowned producer Ross Copperman.

When Columbia Records (Sony Music Nashville) signed her in February of 2023, it took only 3 months until her first EP "Excuse The Mess" was released with 6 songs (plus 2 acoustic versions). On all 6 tracks she was a co-writer and the sonic result was unmistakebly country. Even if she was open to other influences, as in 'That's Why We Fight', the biting duet with Koe Wetzel.

Her first studio album followed on August 2, 2024. It is titled "hungover" (in lowercase, like all the song titles on it) and once again the by now 25-year-old artist was involved as a songwriter on all 14 tracks on the project. Hence this also includes the official first single from the album and of her career: 'you look like you love me'.

Although the song was initially not planned for release and had been written two years prior, just to pass time. "Mya Hansen, who was my publisher at the time but is now on my label side, always loved the song. I was like, 'Mya, this song is just a joke!'", says Ella Langley at  billboard.com. "She tried to get me to put it on the EP and I didn’t let her."

"I wanted a funny song that I could play around a bonfire. [Songwriter Aaron Raitiere] and I literally just hit record and wrote probably 16 verses and then picked our favorite ones and put it together", Ella Langley describes the creation process. Eventually, singer Riley Green, also from Alabama, with whom she was on tour, added another verse to the song.

 

Somehow, the song still ended up at Columbia Records and everyone there liked it so much, that it was decided to include it on the debut album "hungover". 'you look like you love me' is the third song on the record and is produced unusually traditional for a radio single. The spoken parts are particularly striking, but without detracting from the song. Rather, they create an element of unexpectedness. The enthusiasm on social media was so great that the single even climbed to number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts immediately after its release.

It was somehow obvious that the recorded version would be a duet with Riley Green. As was the concept of the conversation between the two in the song. An interaction that was ready-made for the accompanying official video:

Well, I saw him walk in with his cowboy hat,
and I thought to myself, "I could use some of that".
His boots like glass on a sawdust floor, huh,
had moves like nothin' I'd ever seen before.
So I walked right up, and I pulled him to the side.
I handed that man a beer and looked him in the eyes.

(you look like you love me / Ella Langley, Aaron Raitiere, Riley Green)

Ella Langley likes to remember a piece of advice from Chris Stapleton, who once said in an interview: "When you're putting out songs, you never know the song that's going to change your life — and then you could be stuck singing that song for the rest of your life, so really pay attention to the songs you release."

With currently over 77 million streams on Spotify (and already at number 28 on the radio (Billboard Country Airplay) chart after only 7 weeks), there is a high probability that Ella Langley will have to sing the song 'you look like you love me' for the rest of her life.