Clearing things up.
Stella Lefty, who just released her debut album Long Way Home last week, has had a meteoric rise over the past few months, after the viral success of her debut single “Boston.”
The 24-year-old, whose real name is Stella Lefkofsky, began teasing the song on TikTok back in February before officially releasing it in March, and since then “Boston” has rocketed to the top 5 of the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart.
But it hasn’t been without controversy: As with any artist who gets popular, there are plenty of comments online accusing Stella of being an “industry plant” (which doesn’t really mean anything at this point) and also criticizing her for being the daughter of billionaire Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky.
She’s also been accused of stealing her hit song “Boston” from Noah Kahan and his song “Stick Season,” something she addressed during a recent interview with Vanity Fair:
“When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all.”
After it was released though, Kahan’s team reached out:
“We think this sounds similar.”
To avoid the potential for legal action, and no doubt an embarrassing ordeal for an artist who was just trying to get her music career off the ground, Stella said she decided to give Kahan songwriting credit on the song:
“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good.”
Well after Stella released her new album, fans once again began to notice similarities between another one of the songs and a ’90s country hit, speculating that “Summer You Were Mine” was an interpolation of “There’s Your Trouble” by The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks).
“There’s Your Trouble” was written by Mark Selby and Tia Sillers, and released in 1998 on the Dixie Chicks’ breakthrough album Wide Open Spaces. The song would go on to become their first #1 hit, and won the group a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group.
And, maybe even more so than “Boston” and “Stick Season,” there are definite similarities between the ’90s hit and Stella Lefty’s song:
@leftyhq summer u were mineeee !!!🥹 @Stella Lefty #stellalefty #stella
Well after listeners began pointing it out, Rolling Stone confirmed with Lefty’s team that the song is, in fact, an interpolation of “There’s Your Trouble,” and that Selby and Sillers were credited as songwriters on “Summer You Were Mine.” However, they say that a mistake from Spotify and Apple Music resulted in the two songwriters initially being left off the credits, though it’s now been fixed.
And before anybody accuses Stella of only adding the songwriters after listeners pointed out the similarities, Rolling Stone also confirmed that she received clearance for the interpolation back in June, and that Sellers and Selby were listed as co-writers on the song in internal documents with the label as early as July.
Selby unfortunately passed away in 2017 following a battle with cancer, but he and Sillers married in 2001, and she hopes that Stella’s song will bring new fans to their classic hit:
“We wrote a bang up, awesome song.
People are gonna fall in love with Stella’s song, but then they’re also gonna hopefully learn that it’s an interpolation of ‘There’s Your Trouble,’ and for a generation that might not know that song, they might go and discover that one too.”
Stella’s taking a lot of heat online right now, but I don’t really see it affecting her popularity in the long run: She’s blown up over the past couple months with her catchy songs and bubbly personality, which seems to be translating into enthusiasm for her live shows.
Sure, she’s going to have some missteps as a new artist, and she needs to get more comfortable on stage, but Stella is just naturally going to attract more critics due to her background and her quick rise to stardom.
