Are people really refusing ‘Choosin’ Texas’? Or is monoculture just dead?

Ella Langley’s country anthem “ Choosin’ Texas ” has spent nearly half the year atop the Billboard Hot 100. Its 24-week run has surpassed even Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” making it the longest-running No. 1 single in US history.

And lots and lots of people say they’ve never heard it. Are they merely snobs who want to show off their proud ignorance of country music, as a recent argument-provoking Rolling Stone article suggested? Or is it that a No.1 hit song no longer reliably reaches the ears of a broad portion of the public?

The argument over “Choosin’ Texas” and its apparent everywhere-and-nowhere quality, is about something larger than a single song, or even a genre. It’s the newest case of the ongoing, much-discussed death of the “monoculture.”

The monoculture is, or was, a collective frame of reference, a set of mass-cultural touchstones that everyone could assume everyone else knew about.

There was some indeterminate time in the past, the story goes, when a single piece of media could command the attention of everyone in the country: When everyone heard the same songs on the radio and MTV, watched the same few television networks and saw the same handful of movies playing in theaters, whether they liked them or not.

“When I was a brand manager, a hit that big was impossible to avoid because radio and TV put it in front of everyone whether you liked it or not,” said Maria Rodas, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Now you can be one of the millions who had it on repeat all summer, or your feed just never showed it to you.”

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Cultural critics have been eulogizing this idea of monoculture since the dawn of the streaming era. What exactly constituted monoculture and when exactly it died, though, is less clear.

In a 2006 interview, rock critic Robert Christgau lamented the bygone era when “everybody listened to the same music on the radio.” In 2011, the music journalist Touré mourned what he called “Massive Music Moments,” something he declared that no one under 25 had experienced. The popularity and success of Lady Gaga, Adele and Kanye West, he wrote at the time, could not compare to the ubiquity once enjoyed by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

If the cultural landscape seemed fragmented then, it would only become more so. With the benefit of hindsight, music journalists are now waxing nostalgic about more recent eras. Earlier this year, The Hollywood Reporter declared 2014 as “ The Last Time Everyone Watched the Same Thing .” Another article this year from Rolling Stone proclaimed that monoculture ended in 2016.

“That was the last time it felt as though there was a coherent popular culture,” the magazine’s music editor, Jeff Ihaza, wrote, “before everything fractured into algorithmic bits spread across hours of screen time.”

The word “monoculture” comes from agriculture, referring to the practice of cultivating a single crop on a plot of land. In pre-industrial times, farmers planted an array of different crops in the same space, creating a diverse environment that mimicked natural ecosystems. When the Europeans colonized the Americas, they began planting single commercial crops such as sugar or tobacco over large areas, to sell overseas.

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Though the technique was more economically efficient, it introduced new problems: A pest that infected one plant was likely to infect them all, threatening to wipe out entire harvests. Planting a single crop also led to faster depletion of nutrients in soil.

Plant monoculture also had aesthetic purposes. For generations, American streets and parks showcased the tall, stately pillars of rows and rows of elm trees. The arrival of Dutch elm disease not only ravaged these green spaces, but discredited the whole goal of aiming for such uniformity.

Like its agricultural and horticultural counterparts, the monoculture of era-defining music, TV and movies seemed alluring on the surface. Having common cultural references could bring people together, making society feel more cohesive and connected.

But on closer examination, the perils became clear. Pop culture in the pre-social internet, pre-streaming era was largely dictated top-down by industry gatekeepers, designed to appeal to as many people as possible. It might have been easier in those days to make small talk with coworkers, but it was harder to discover work without the backing of the industry machine.

“As comforting as it was in olden times to know that just about anyone you’d meet on the street would’ve heard the latest Madonna single or would know what happened on Dallas that week, if you were the sort of person who preferred The Young Ones and Hüsker Dü, you could feel pretty excluded from the cultural conversation,” Noel Murray wrote for the AV Club in 2009.

And even culture that seemed ubiquitous could be inconsequential or ignored in some circles. People longing for the days of monoculture often point to sitcoms such as “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” which drew millions of viewers. But those shows were less universal than people now make them seem.

“Everybody did not watch ‘Seinfeld.’ Everybody did not watch ‘Friends,’” NPR pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes wrote in 2024. “In fact, some ‘everybodies’ pointed out that it owed an awful lot to ‘Living Single.’”

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Today, popular culture is produced from the bottom up, propelled by social media recommendation algorithms, said Kyle Chayka, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.” Theoretically, this means that smaller, independent artists can release their work on social media platforms and directly reach the audiences most inclined to appreciate it. It also means that users can more easily access media that better aligns with their tastes.

But this creates a fragmented landscape where people are consuming media in line with their own interests, while fewer and fewer people seem to be consuming the same things as one another.

Meanwhile, algorithms are vulnerable to manipulation. Certain features can help songs or videos achieve maximum success on social media platforms, giving creators and artists incentive to engineer those features into their work.

Paradoxically, then, this system of individual artists pursuing individual success creates a new kind of sameness, which Chayka and others also describe as monoculture. The same phenomenon applies to minimalist interiors in independent coffee shops, all-neutral home decorating schemes and the uniformity of facial features and bodies on screen. The old monoculture might be dead, if it ever existed, but a new one has taken its place.

“We’re not all watching the same exact TV show, but there are a hundred versions of ‘Love Is Blind’ and ‘Love Island’ or ‘Real Housewives,’ and we’re all watching slightly different versions of the same genre of thing,” Chayka said.

Rodas added, “Culture has splintered into a thousand niches, and inside each niche the safe, familiar thing wins.”

There are big events that still seem to command widespread attention — the World Cup, the New York Knicks’ NBA championship run, Taylor Swift’s wedding, the cyclosporiasis outbreak affecting iceberg lettuce — and this summer in particular inspired a flurry of commentary wondering whether the old monoculture had returned. But depending on one’s interests and algorithm, it’s still easier than ever to miss out on something popular.

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What does it mean, then, that 2026’s biggest hit didn’t even register for a vast swath of listeners?

“You can pay close attention to music for every day of your life, and still miss the overwhelming majority of what’s out there to be heard,” rock critic Steven Hyden wrote in a recent Substack column. “Even really, really big songs like ‘Choosin’ Texas.’”

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艾拉·兰利的乡村歌曲《选择德州》在公告牌百强单曲榜上占据榜首近半年之久。它连续24周蝉联冠军，甚至超过了玛丽亚·凯莉的《我只想要你做圣诞礼物》，成为美国历史上蝉联冠军时间最长的单曲。

很多人都说他们从未听过这首歌。他们仅仅是像最近一篇引发争议的《滚石》杂志文章所暗示的那样，是想炫耀自己对乡村音乐的无知的势利眼吗？还是说，一首冠军单曲已经无法可靠地被广大公众所熟知了？

围绕《Choosin' Texas》这首歌及其看似无处不在又无处可寻的特质的争论，远不止关乎一首歌，甚至也不仅仅是一种音乐类型。这是人们热议的“单一文化”消亡的最新例证。

单一文化是一种集体参照框架，是一套大众文化准则，每个人都可以假定其他人都知道这些准则。

据说，在过去的某个不确定时期，一种媒体可以吸引全国所有人的注意力：每个人都在广播和 MTV 上听到同样的歌曲，观看同样的几个电视频道，在电影院观看同样的几部电影，无论他们喜欢与否。

“我以前做品牌经理的时候，这种爆款歌曲根本躲不开，因为不管你喜不喜欢，广播和电视都会推送给你，”伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校市场营销学副教授玛丽亚·罗达斯说。“现在，你可能成为整个夏天循环播放这首歌的数百万人之一，也可能你的信息流根本没推送给你。”

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自流媒体时代伊始，文化批评家们就一直在赞扬单一文化这一概念。然而，究竟什么构成了单一文化，以及它究竟何时消亡，却并不那么清晰。

2006年，摇滚乐评人罗伯特·克里斯特高在一次采访中感叹“人人都听着同样的电台音乐”的时代已经一去不复返了。2011年，音乐记者图雷哀叹他所谓的“音乐黄金时代”，并声称25岁以下的人都没有经历过这些。他当时写道，Lady Gaga、Adele和坎耶·韦斯特的流行和成功，根本无法与迈克尔·杰克逊的《Thriller》或涅槃乐队的《Nevermind》曾经的普及程度相提并论。

如果说当时的文化格局已经显得支离破碎，那么之后只会更加如此。如今，音乐记者们带着事后诸葛亮的眼光，开始怀念起近些年。今年早些时候，《好莱坞报道》宣称2014年是“最后一次所有人都在看同样的东西”。《滚石》杂志今年的另一篇文章则宣称，单一文化时代在2016年终结。

“那是最后一次感觉流行文化还保持着连贯性，”该杂志的音乐编辑杰夫·伊哈扎写道，“之后一切都分裂成算法碎片，分散在数小时的屏幕时间里。”

“单一栽培”一词源于农业，指的是在一块土地上只种植一种作物的做法。在工业化时代之前，农民会在同一块土地上种植多种不同的作物，创造出一种模拟自然生态系统的多样化环境。当欧洲殖民者殖民美洲后，他们开始在大片土地上种植单一的经济作物，例如糖或烟草，以便出口到海外。

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虽然这种方法更经济高效，但也带来了新的问题：一种害虫一旦感染一株植物，就很可能感染所有植物，威胁到整季收成。此外，单一作物种植还会导致土壤养分更快消耗殆尽。

植物单一栽培也具有美学意义。几代以来，美国的街道和公园里都种植着高大挺拔、姿态优美的榆树。荷兰榆树病的到来不仅摧毁了这些绿地，也使追求这种统一性的目标彻底落空。

与农业和园艺领域一样，时代标志性的音乐、电视和电影的单一文化现象表面上看起来颇具吸引力。拥有共同的文化参照可以拉近人与人之间的距离，使社会更具凝聚力和联系感。

但仔细观察后，其中的风险便显而易见。在社交网络和流媒体出现之前的时代，流行文化很大程度上是由行业把关人自上而下地主导的，其目的在于尽可能地吸引更多的人。在那个年代，与同事闲聊或许更容易，但如果没有行业机器的支持，找到工作就难上加难。

“在过去，知道你在街上遇到的几乎每个人都听过麦当娜的最新单曲，或者知道达拉斯那周发生了什么，这固然令人感到欣慰。但如果你喜欢看《少年们》和听 Hüsker Dü 的歌，你可能会觉得自己被排除在文化对话之外，”诺埃尔·默里在 2009 年为 AV Club 写道。

即使是看似无处不在的文化，在某些圈子里也可能无关紧要或被忽视。怀念单一文化时代的人们常常会提到像《宋飞正传》和《老友记》这样的情景喜剧，它们曾吸引了数百万观众。但这些剧集远没有人们现在认为的那么具有普世性。

“并非所有人都看过《宋飞正传》，也并非所有人都看过《老友记》，”美国国家公共电台流行文化记者琳达·霍姆斯在2024年写道。“事实上，一些‘普通人’指出，《宋飞正传》很大程度上借鉴了《单身生活》。”

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《纽约客》专栏作家、著有《过滤世界：算法如何扁平化文化》一书的凯尔·查伊卡表示，如今流行文化是由下而上生产的，并受到社交媒体推荐算法的推动。理论上讲，这意味着规模较小的独立艺术家可以在社交媒体平台上发布作品，直接触达最有可能欣赏其作品的受众。这也意味着用户可以更轻松地获取更符合自身口味的媒体内容。

但这造成了媒体消费的碎片化局面，人们根据自己的兴趣消费媒体，而消费相同内容的人似乎越来越少。

与此同时，算法很容易被操纵。某些功能可以帮助歌曲或视频在社交媒体平台上获得最大成功，这促使创作者和艺术家将这些功能融入到他们的作品中。

因此，矛盾的是，这种艺术家各自追求个人成功的体系反而造就了一种新的同质化，查伊卡等人将其描述为单一文化。同样的现象也体现在独立咖啡馆的极简主义室内设计、全中性色调的家居装饰方案以及屏幕上人物面部特征和体型的千篇一律上。旧的单一文化或许已经消亡（如果它曾经存在过的话），但一种新的单一文化已经取而代之。

“我们看的电视节目并不完全相同，但是像《爱情盲选》、《爱情岛》或《真正的家庭主妇》这样的节目有上百个版本，我们都在看同一类型节目的不同版本，”查伊卡说。

罗达斯补充道：“文化已经分裂成上千个小众领域，而在每个小众领域里，安全、熟悉的事物总是占据上风。”

有些大事依然能吸引广泛关注——世界杯、纽约尼克斯队夺得NBA总冠军、泰勒·斯威夫特的婚礼、影响卷心莴苣的环孢子虫病疫情——尤其是今年夏天，引发了大量评论，人们不禁思考单一文化是否又回来了。但无论个人兴趣和信息推送算法如何，错过热门事件仍然比以往任何时候都更容易。

格雷戈里·沙姆斯/盖蒂图片社

那么，这意味着什么呢？2026 年最热门的歌曲甚至没有引起很大一部分听众的注意？

摇滚乐评人史蒂文·海登在最近一篇Substack专栏文章中写道：“即使你一生都密切关注音乐，仍然会错过绝大多数值得聆听的作品。即使是像《Choosin' Texas》这样非常非常热门的歌曲也不例外。”

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