Ella Langley and Riley Green scored a No. 1 hit, Langley’s first, with “You Look Like You Love Me.” The song, which also won a CMA Award for Musical Event of the Year, was written by Langley, Green and Aaron Raitiere, inspired by a conversation Langley had with Raitiere.

“His ideas are nuts and I love writing with him,” Langley tells Billboard of the song, which was began in 2022. “We were in a write and he was like, “So how’s your relationship life going?” and I said, “Honestly, I’m at the point where if they look like they love me, I just got to get out of there.” And he was like, ‘That’s a great song title.’

“Six months later, we had another writing session,” she continues. “I wanted a funny song that I could play around a bonfire. We literally just hit record and wrote probably 16 verses and then picked our favorite ones and put it together. Then Riley added a verse, and it’s just this sweet love song.”

Green and Langley toured together, which inspired the two to finish the song.

“It was really organic,” Green tells Country Countdown USA. “I knew Ella. We were going on tour together, thought it would be cool to have a song together. I wrote a verse, and sent it to her, and they liked the idea, and it worked out very well.”

Green and Langley also collaborated on “Don’t Mind If I Do,” the title track of Green’s 2024 studio album, released in October. Green was pleasantly surprised by how much fans resonated with with “You Look Like You Love Me.”

“I was happy it became the hit that it is, because it’s such a traditional song,” he says. “It’s cool to see there’s room for that kind of song with talking verses. It’s cool that it’s that different. It doesn’t sound like anything else on the radio.”

Like Green, Langley also never imagined the success that “You Look Like You Love Me” would become.

“Mya Hansen, who was my publisher at the time but is now on my label side, always loved the song,” Langley says. “I was like, ‘Mya, this song is just a joke.’ She tried to get me to put it on the [2023 Excuse the Mess] EP, and I didn’t let her. So, she put it in the Dropbox link on her own for this album, and that’s how the label heard it — it was the last one of all of the demos. Everyone loved it, and I was like, ‘If y’all believe in this song, then let’s cut it.’ It was right after we cut it that Riley asked us on tour.”

Langley touched on her own surprise at the success of “You Look Like You Love Me,” backstage at the CMA Awards.

“I didn’t think this song was ever going to come out in the first place,” she said at the time. “It was just a song in my audio recordings for almost a year after we wrote it. And a girl named Mya Hansen believed it enough to slip it in every Dropbox link picking for the album. And everyone loved it. And then Riley asked us on tour. And when I was listening to the cut, I was thinking, ‘Dang, how cool would it be if we turned it into a duet and kind of gave the guy side of a woman walking up to him in the bar in the first place?’ And now, we’re here with two awards in our hands.”

Green and Langley are touring together again in 2025, on Green’s Damn Country Music Tour. “You Look Like You Love Me” is from Langley’s latest Hungover record, out in August. Find the album here.