The Biggest Song of 2026 Is Also a CPR Metronome

This is our favorite kind of Ella news: completely unplanned, actually useful, and a little bit funny.

Ella teamed up with the American Heart Association on tour to learn hands-only CPR, and somewhere in the middle of it somebody did the math on her own record. "Choosin' Texas" runs at 112 beats per minute. The AHA recommends chest compressions at 100 to 120 per minute. The song is sitting right in the pocket, per iHeartRadio.

So the song that has been stuck in your head since March is now, technically, a piece of safety equipment.

Why the Beat Matters

The whole reason the AHA hands people a song is that panic wrecks your rhythm. In a real emergency, nobody is counting to 120. But almost everybody can hold a tempo they already know by heart, and that is the entire trick. "Stayin' Alive" has been the go-to for years for exactly this reason. Now there's a country option, and it's the most-streamed song in America this year.

The AHA's line on it is blunt: CPR started immediately can double or triple someone's chance of surviving cardiac arrest. They run classes and free online walkthroughs at heart.org, and hands-only CPR is genuinely a two-step thing — call 911, then push hard and fast in the center of the chest.

A Nice Turn for a Song About Leaving

There is something a little poetic about this one. "Choosin' Texas" is a kiss-off — a song about somebody picking somewhere else over you. We went line by line through what it's really about last week, right around the time it passed Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey with a 15th week at No. 1.

Now it's the beat somebody might keep in their head while they're keeping a stranger alive. That's a strange and pretty good second life for a breakup song.

Ella's back on stage Thursday at Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford before the run rolls on — check the tour page for dates, set times and tickets. And if the encore feels like it's the right speed, now you know why.