Saturday Night Live has a knack for cutting some of their best sketches, and this Stella Lefty spot during Weekend Update – that didn’t make it to air – is the latest example.
Lefty, an indie-folk leaning country artist, dropped her first single “Kiss Me” back in November 2024. She released a few songs throughout 2025, but her first viral hit came earlier this year when she released a song called “Thinking ’bout You,” which has racked up over 27 million streams after first popping up on… you guessed it: TikTok.
But with her popularity has come a lot of scrutiny. Many asked how an artist like Lefty became so popular so quickly, and a lot of skeptics have pointed towards the rising country start having a billionaire father. Stella Lefty’s real name is Stella Lefkofsky, and she’s the daughter of Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky, who currently serves as the founder and CEO of Tempus AI, a health technology company.
That led many to label her as “rich kid nepo baby” who used her father’s connections and wealth to jumpstart her music career. It goes without saying that wealth makes things easier, and these days, people just get angry at anyone who seemingly had it easier than them. The phrase “industry plant” is a term that follows her around a lot, and as of late, many “Lefty Haters” have really taken notice of the songs of hers that… well, sound a lot like hits that already exist.
The total count of “Stella Lefty songs that sound like something else” has reached four (that list continues to unofficially rise), and we recently took a look at every instance where the “Boston” singer has borrowed from – or seemingly found inspiration in – popular tracks that already existed. There’s definitely some arguments to be made that she’s piggybacking off the success of already established tracks, and that’s what SNL honed in on in this cut-for-time Weekend Update segment.
Featured cast member Veronika Slowikowska – playing Stella Lefty – slid into the Weekend Update desk next to Colin Jost to address plagiarism allegations. SNL mentioned that Lefty’s song “Boston” just reached No. 1 on the Country Charts, even though it borrows heavily from Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.” Lefty (who was pretty convincingly portrayed by Slowikowska) quickly shot down those accusations and claimed she was just an authentic girl from Illinois singing country songs about Boston.
Though that was a funny start, the segment got even better when “Lefty” went on to share some new songs she was working on that were blatant rip offs of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” (Stella’s was “Big Boston Pub”), Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (“Boston, I’ll Always Love You”), “One Week” by the Barenaked Ladies (“One Week Since I Went To Boston”), and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift (that one was “We Are Never Ever Going Back To Boston”).
It was actually pretty funny to see SNL jab at the rising star for her alleged pattern of plagiarism, and her affinity for Boston (they really stuck that landing when Slowikowska had Lefty sing a snippet of “Take Me Home, Boston Roads”). It’s a shame that it didn’t actually make it into the show that aired on Saturday Night. I’d guess they thought it was a little too niche for a national audience, even though the real Lefty does have a current No. 1 hit.
This might even drive people that were unfamiliar with Lefty to check out her catalogue… and hey. any publicity is good publicity, right?
And if you are wondering how Stella Lefty felt about that, she actually responded to the cut-for-time sketch online.
The “Boston” singer clearly has a good sense of humor, because she shared the clip to her Instagram story praising the long-running NBC staple for the funny spoof and complimenting the voice of Veronika Slowikowska:
“Funny as f***. Veronika, your voice is amazing.”
