"It Was Just Off to the Races": Ella Langley Discusses How Hit Song, 'You Look Like You Love Me', Came to Be During CRS 2025

Ella Langley recently dished on all things 'You Look Like You Love Me', the fast-rising star's most recent smash success.

During this year's Country Radio Seminar, the artist detailed how naturally the hit came to be, discussed Riley Green's eventual involvement and reflected on the song's reign over country music throughout 2024.

Originally penned alongside songwriter Aaron Ratiere, the tune was born from a quip Langley apparently made in a writing room. She explained, during the event's "Cycle of a Song" panel, "This specific afternoon, I'd already been in a write earlier that day, and I was kind of like, 'ugh, I don't want to go write another song.'"

Despite not feeling up for it, Langley persisted, keeping the collaboration conversational with her sharp wit and cool demeanor. She continued, "[Ratiere] looked at me and he said, 'How's your relationship life going?' I said, 'Aaron, I'm honestly at the point where if they look like they love me, I gotta get out of there.' He giggled and was like, 'What if we wrote that?'"

And they did, the song naturally evolving from the artist's quick remark. "I mean, it was just off to the races," she shared. "I think we wrote ten to 15 different verses for that song. We just hit record and mapped it out that way, and we really wrote it as a joke. I remember walking out of the room thinking, no one's going to understand this song, and I'm going to get to play it around the bonfire, and that's probably going to be it."

That, however, wouldn't be the fate of 'You Look Like You Love Me'. Far from it.

At the beginning, the song was intended to be a solo number until Langley joined Riley Green on tour in early 2024. She soon got an idea.

She explained during the panel, "It just hit me: what if Riley rewrote the second verse and wrote it how he would actually respond to a woman walking up to him like that? I think people might like it. I don't know. And then, he did."

Together, largely thanks to Langley's intuition, they made 'You Look Like You Love Me' the hit it is today.

"It's just one of the most organic things that's happened to me as an artist and as a songwriter," she shared.

In the time since the song's success, Langley's own star has risen, the artist having released her full-length debut, hungover, to wide acclaim and headlined a number of dates across the United States, with many more still to come.

Along the way, she has taken cues from the women around her, looking to fellow country titans for advice. During the event, she said, "Having women – like Miranda Lambert's been one in my corner, and Lainey Wilson and a lot of them, really – shepherd me where it's like, 'Hey, this is just normal. This is a part of life. This is what this is what it is, baby.' So whenever I get that opportunity to share a little knowledge of what I've been through, I can and it feels nuts to think that like 'You want to be like me? Are you sure?'"

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