Everyone's having a great time talking about the funniest new character on the pop landscape. The suddenly omnipresent country-adjacent folk-pop hitmaker Stella Lefty is otherwise known as Stella Lefkofsky, the daughter of Groupon's billionaire co-founder. That would already be a silly enough backstory, but it gets even goofier when you consider just how often Lefty's personality-deficient songs seem to be directly lifted from other people's extremely famous hits.
The reason that Stella Lefty is getting all this attention is her current smash "Boston," the #2 song in America this week, which sounds very similar to another smash that is still fresh in the collective memory: "Stick Season," the 2022 sensation that made Noah Kahan famous. Kahan has a songwriting credit on "Boston," but Lefty insists, "When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all." That claim is complicated by the fact that Lefty has posted many, many covers of "Stick Season" online, sometimes introducing them by saying stuff like, "This is for Noah and only Noah." It's too perfect! You couldn't make this stuff up!
The best thing I heard about "Boston" was Joe Coscarelli, on the New York Times Popcast, saying that it was "on the Stick Season riddim." And it sure looks like Lefty is taking that dancehall approach all over Long Way Home, the debut album that she released a couple of weeks ago. People quickly noticed that her song "Summer You Were Mine" is a limp retread of the (formerly Dixie) Chicks' "There's Your Trouble" — not exactly an obscure song, considering that it hit #1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart in 1998 and won a Grammy. "There's Your Trouble" songwriters Tia Sillers and Mark Selby weren't initially listed as songwriters on "Summer You Were Mine" on streaming services, but their credits showed up later. Atlantic, Lefty's label, tells Rolling Stone that it was an approved interpolation and that the credit omission was what the magazine describes as a "streaming platform error."
And now it's happening again! In the past few days, viral posts have compared Stella Lefty's album track "Why Wouldn't We" with "I'll Name The Dogs," a song that Blake Shelton took to #1 on the Country Airplay chart at the end of 2017. The chorus melodies are more or less identical, right down to the you do the this, I do the that lyrical conceit. Here, listen.
@stellaleftymusic WHY WOULDNT WE >>
♬ Why Wouldn't We - STELLA LEFTY
@blakeshelton What can we say... dogs are a country boy's best friend. -Team BS #Animals
♬ I'll Name the Dogs - Blake Shelton
It really gives you a new appreciation of Blake Shelton, doesn't it? At press time, Tidal credits list Stella Lefty, Emily Weisband, Grady Block, and Steph Jones as the writers of "Why Wouldn't We." "I'll Name The Dogs" songwriters Matt Dragstrem, Ben Hayslip, and Josh Thompson are not credited. Must be another one of them streaming platform errors.
This whole thing is a fantastic bit, and I hope Stella Lefty keeps it going. I can't wait until she drops something like "I Will Always Hug You."
Lefty has also been accused of running her own fan account (à la Normani in 2024) and last night, she made her Grand Ole Opry debut, which, expectedly, spurred more backlash. Her Long Way Home Tour, announced last week, begins in January.
