Joseph Hudak
Contact Joseph Hudak on X Contact Joseph Hudak by Email View all posts by Joseph Hudak October 14, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
Add us as a Google Preferred Source 
Midland talk about their new album 'Stages,' life on the road, and the impact of "Choosin' Texas" on country music. Harper Smith* It’s impossible to listen to the year’s biggest charting song, Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” without hearing shades of traditional country songs that came before it. That includes Midland’s 2017 debut single, “Drinkin’ Problem.” The band themselves tell Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now that Langley’s success helps illuminate the traditional country music they were making during a time when bro country was still king.
“‘Choosin’ Texas’ coming out might be the best thing to ever happen to Midland,” the trio’s singer Mark Wystrach says, seated next to bassist Cameron Duddy and guitarist Jess Carson. “It shined a light on the music that we’ve been playing, music that we set out to play.”
View this post on Instagram
The Texas group’s new album Stages builds on the sounds they were working in on their first album On the Rocks. But Wystrach says they couldn’t have made their latest without going through certain experiences. “Stages is the album we would have made 12 years ago if we had the chops… We evolved so much as musicians.”
“And writers,” Duddy adds. “The songs that came to us [for Stages] were not there.”
“You gotta go and live life,” Wystrach says. “Get a bunch of scars, some Ws, some Ls, fuck up and course correct.”
