Ella Langley | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #651

TL;DR

Theo Von interviews rising country star Ella Langley about her upbringing, new album Dandelion, and navigating fame while staying true to herself.

Key Points

• 1.Ella Langley grew up deeply rooted in Southern Baptist church culture in South Alabama. She was homeschooled through sixth grade, learned to read from hymnals, and sang in church from a very young age.
• 2.Her musical gift was recognized almost from birth by her grandparents. Her grandmother discovered she could match pitch as a baby, and her grandfather could play any instrument by ear — music was the family's central activity.
• 3.Eye surgeries shaped her early childhood in unexpected ways. She had multiple surgeries to correct crossed eyes, including one as recently as two to three years ago, where the eyeballs are physically removed to fix muscle alignment.
• 4.She was a disruptive student who earned a designated corner desk facing the wall in kindergarten. Her offense: 'distracting others' by talking constantly, leading her parents to homeschool her.
• 5.Her first paid gig was playing weddings at age 15 for around $200. She later played bars, college venues, funerals, sports bars, and even witnessed a drug arrest mid-performance in Tuscaloosa.
• 6.Ella attended Auburn University for two years while playing shows the entire time. She eventually left to pursue music full-time, driven by an internal conviction that not doing so would mean hating her life forever.
• 7.Her new album Dandelion drops April 10th and she is heading out on tour. Theo also previews a joint Tuscaloosa show featuring Ella and Morgan Wallen.
• 8.She describes her songwriting as entirely instinct-driven with no commercial formula. At 26 and not married, she writes from lived experience — particularly about love, independence, and the tension between wanting connection and giving everything to her career.
• 9.Fame has been mentally the hardest adjustment, not the performance itself. She describes being approached for photos mid-workout, mid-meal, and in bathrooms, and had to invent a new facial expression for photos after meet-and-greet smiling burned out her face muscles.
• 10.Laney Wilson is a major point of comparison and inspiration for Ella. Theo and Ella discuss Laney's superhuman stage energy, her post-CMA Awards camo cape outfit, and how Ella uses her work ethic as a benchmark while acknowledging she personally needs solitude to recharge.
• 11.Ella's parents stayed together through a difficult marriage, which she finds genuinely admirable. She reflects that for many years the family quietly wondered if they even liked each other, but their perseverance paid off.
• 12.Theo confesses he once awkwardly told Ella she should move around the stage more like Laney Wilson. Ella admits the comment stuck with her and made her think seriously about her stage presence, though both laughed it off as Theo being nervous around a woman he didn't know well.