“Ella’s Probably Too Smart to Date Me”: Riley Green Pays Tribute to Ella Langley on The Viall Files Podcast

In a new interview with Nick Viall and Natalie Joy for The Viall Files podcast, Riley Green has paid homage to his trailblazing ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ collaborator, Ella Langley.

The ‘Jesus Saves’ singer-songwriter delved into his creative relationship with his fellow Alabama native, and when the podcast hosts tried to get him to comment on fan-instigated dating rumours about the duo, Riley had a typically disarming quip at the ready.

After Natalie Joy admitted that fans across the world are “shipping” the two artists, referring to how they keep hoping Riley Green and Ella Langley will get together, she asked him point-blank if they're just friends. Riley responded, “Yeah. I mean, Ella's probably too smart to date me anyway”, before going on to explain that he understands why listeners of ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ and their more recent duet, ‘Don't Mind If I Do’, want to imagine the romance in the songs is based on real-life.

The ‘Worst Way’ crooner reflected, “I think that's kind of the country music fan, like they love the Tim McGraw and Faiths, and the George and Tammys, and I think people want to believe that. When we first started having the success we did with that song, I kind of told Ella, I was like, ‘There are going to be a lot of things said, but I mean, we don't really gotta play into it...it's gonna be something that people enjoy in the same way we do when we go and listen to those songs’”.

He went on to celebrate how often he's been able to perform both ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ and ‘Don't Mind If I Do’ with Ella Langley this year, with the two artists set to team up again in 2025 for Riley Green's Damn Country Music tour, “It's cool to have that one and have that moment with on-stage her every night, and the title-track of my album is called ‘Don't Mind If I Do’, and that's a really big song, so it's cool to have that one with her. That's a completely different type of song”.

Just last night (Tuesday, December 10th), the duo joined forces for a beautifully stripped-back live rendition of ’Don't Mind If I Do’ on The Voice USA grand finale, perhaps signalling that their second collaboration will be shipped to Country Radio soon. At the time of writing, ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ sits at No. 1 on both the Billboard Country Airplay and Mediabase rankings, marking Ella Langley's debut chart-topper and making her the first female artist to reach the peak in 2024.

Elsewhere during Riley Green's discussion on The Viall Files, the ‘I Wish Grandpas Never Died’ hitmaker recalled how he ended up featuring on ‘You Look Like You Love Me’, “I first heard it from a promoter that kind of helps manage [Ella Langley], that's a buddy of mine, he was the first person that ever told me about Ella. I was touring in Alabama and he would put her on some shows of mine”.

Riley Green paid tribute to Ella Langley's enchanting vocals, “I liked her voice, she's obviously from Alabama. Very country, which I liked. He played the song for me, and it wasn't really pitched to me like it needed to be a duet. He was more like ‘What do you think about this?’” Shortly after, Riley decided to offer up a second verse for it.

Riley Green admitted, “I had no idea it would be a hit at all”, before outlining how he initially thought it would just be good for them to have a duet they could perform on the road.

When touching on the process behind ’Don't Mind If I Do’, which serves as the title-track to Riley Green's latest album, he confessed he was originally planning on using Ella Langley's vocals as a place-holder, before drafting in another artist to sing with him.

However, Ella ended up doing such an incredible job that he couldn't help but include her on the final version, with Riley gushing, “I don't think anybody's gonna do it any better than that”.

Riley Green and Ella Langley embark on the Damn Country Music Tour in March 2025, with the collaborators also lined up to perform a special New Year's Eve show in Durant, Oklahoma.

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