Stella Lefty
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Stella Lefkofsky (born August 13, 2002), known professionally as Stella Lefty, is an American singer-songwriter. She gained prominence in 2026 following the viral success of her country-pop single "Boston" and the release of her debut studio album Long Way Home.
Early life and education
Stella Lefkofsky was born on August 13, 2002, and was raised in Glencoe, Illinois. Her father is billionaire businessman Eric Lefkofsky, a co-founder of Groupon. He is also the founder and CEO of Tempus AI and a co-founder of Mediaocean, among other companies.
Lefty started writing songs and taking guitar lessons as a child but initially did not perform publicly because of her stage fright. She grew up listening mostly to country and pop musicians, including Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Tim McGraw, and Brad Paisley. When she was 13 years old, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. After graduating from New Trier High School, she attended Tulane University in 2020 to study public health, with "no plan of doing anything in music". Lefty graduated from Tulane University in 2024. She is a sister of the Pi Beta Phi.[bettersourceneeded] While studying abroad in Amsterdam during a "depressive" period, she began sharing her earliest song compositions on TikTok.
Career
In 2022, Lefty began posting videos of her singing song covers and original songs to her TikTok account. In 2024, she released her debut single "Kiss Me", which gained popularity on TikTok. Record producer J Kash soon messaged her online and the two began collaborating after she moved to Los Angeles. She released her debut extended play (EP) Tragic, Really, in 2025. In January 2026, she released the single "Thinkin' Bout You", which she wrote in collaboration with friends Grace Enger and Sadie Jean. Her song "The Kill" was released in February of that year as part of the soundtrack for the film Scream 7. Shortly thereafter, she signed with Atlantic Records' country music imprint, Atlantic Outpost.
Lefty gained prominence in 2026 following the viral success of her country pop single "Boston", which debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 95 in April and climbed to the top-20 a month later. In May 2026, she released her second EP, Is This Heaven?, which featured the previously-released songs "Boston", "Thinking 'Bout You", and "I Know I Know" and a collaboration with Vincent Mason, "Something to Lose". Is This Heaven? debuted at number 38 on the Billboard 200 chart and at number nine on the Top Country Albums chart with 20,000 units sold.
In March 2026, it was announced that Lefty would perform as an opening act for Tucker Wetmore's Brunette World Tour. Lefty quietly dropped out of those dates without explanation before posting an apology to her Instagram stories for having not announced her departure from the tour earlier.
Lefty was nominated for Best New Artist and Best Country (for "Boston") at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. Her debut studio album Long Way Home was released on August 21, 2026. For The Guardian, Laura Snapes gave the album two out of five stars, calling Lefty's songwriting on it "stunningly unremarkable" and the album overall "indistinct and trope-ridden", while Abby Jones of Paste gave it a "D-" rating for its "tragically nearsighted" perspective, "painfully unimaginative" formula, and "unremarkable instrumentals". Lefty announced her Long Way Home Tour, set to begin in January 2027.
Lefty performed at the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in September 2026.
Musical style
Lefty's music has primarily been described as country, with her describing the genre as "what I love with my fucking heart and soul" while expressing ambivalence toward performing it despite not being from the South. She has described her voice as raspy. For The New Yorker, Brady Brickner-Wood described Lefty's singing voice as an affected "raspy Southern twang" and her songs as "projecting the uncomplicated joy of a wide-eyed college graduate who goes to the bar on the weekends and falls in love at first sight".
Personal life
As of July 2026[update], Lefty is in a relationship with fellow singer-songwriter Vincent Mason.
Public image
Upon her rise to fame in mid-2026, Lefty was widely criticized online as both a "nepo baby" and an "industry plant" due to her father's billionaire status, with many claiming that the opportunities she had been given were solely a result of her family's wealth and that the success of her song "Boston" had been manufactured. Adam Alpert, Lefty's manager and the founder of Disruptor Records, stated in response to the criticisms that "industry plants don't exist" and that those who were deemed as such had just made "great songs that people like"..
Interpolations and plagiarism accusations
Social media users and critics have denounced Lefty for releasing songs that sound similar to the work of other artists without providing proper credit, coining the name "Stella Thefty" in response to the appropriation.
Lefty was accused online of plagiarizing the melody and structure of Noah Kahan's 2022 song "Stick Season" to make "Boston", with Miranda Wollen of Paste deriding the latter as a "poor imitation" of the former and dubbing Lefty a "Noah Kahan copycat". Kahan received a writing credit on the song after members of his team reached out to her to note the similarities between the two songs, though she stated that she "wasn't thinking about Noah Kahan" while writing it, which critics and social media users expressed disbelief at and contrasted with her numerous covers of "Stick Season" on TikTok.
Lefty's song "Summer You Were Mine", also from Long Way Home, interpolates the Chicks' song "There's Your Trouble", which briefly received backlash when its writers, Tia Sillers and Mark Selby, were uncredited on streaming platforms. Atlantic attributed the omission to a technical error and confirmed that permission had been received to interpolate the song prior to its release. The album's closing song "Why Wouldn't We" was described online as copying the melody and call-and-response lyrics from Blake Shelton's 2017 song "I'll Name the Dogs". She faced further accusations that the chorus of her song "Misery", from Tragic, Really, was musically similar to the chorus of "A Million Dreams" from the 2017 musical film The Greatest Showman and that the verses of her standalone single "Seven Eleven" used nearly the same melody as Wheatus's "Teenage Dirtbag" (which she had also previously covered). Abby Jones, writing for Paste, found resemblances between Lefty's song "Good at Leaving", from Long Way Home, and the Justin Bieber song "Ghost". As of September 2026, none of Lefty's aforementioned work credits songwriters outside of her writing team.
Discography
Albums
| Title | Details | Peak chart positions | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | US Country | AUS | CAN | IRE | NZ | UK | ||
| Long Way Home | Released: August 21, 2026 Label: Atlantic Outpost Formats: Digital download, streaming | 11 | 4 | 10 | 8 | 60 | 9 | 77 |
Extended plays
| Title | EP details | Peak chart positions | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | US Country | AUS | CAN | NZ | ||
| Tragic, Really | Released: July 15, 2025 Label: Independent Formats: Digital download, streaming | — | — | — | — | — |
| Is This Heaven? | Released: May 15, 2026 Label: Atlantic Outpost Formats: Digital download, streaming | 24 | 6 | 21 | 16 | 27 |
| "—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory. |
Singles
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Certifications | Album | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | US Country | US Country Airplay | AUS | CAN | CAN Country | IRE | NZ | UK | WW | ||||
| "Kiss Me" | 2024 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Non-album single | |
| "Cynic" | 2025 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Tragic, Really | |
| "See Through" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Decay" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Grace" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Seven Eleven" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Non-album singles | ||
| "Could've Been Me" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Thinking 'bout You" | 2026 | — | 50 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Is This Heaven? | |
| "Slow Dancin'" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "The Kill" | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Scream 7 | ||
| "Boston" | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 10 | ARIA: Platinum BPI: Silver MC: 2× Platinum RMNZ: Gold | Is This Heaven? | |
| "I Know I Know" | — | 34 | — | — | 53 | — | — | — | 87 | — | |||
| "Something to Lose" (featuring Vincent Mason) | 40 | 15 | 45 | — | 60 | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Lean In, Kiss Me" | — | 43 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Long Way Home | ||
| "—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory. |
Other charted songs
| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Bub. | US Country | NZ Hot | |||
| "Good at Leaving" | 2026 | — | — | 16 | Is This Heaven? |
| "Summer You Were Mine" | 21 | 48 | 14 | Long Way Home |
Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Category | Recipient(s) and nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | MTV Video Music Awards | Best Country | "Boston" | Pending | |
| Best New Artist | Herself | Pending |
Tours
Headlining
- Our First Shows Together (2026)
- Stella Lefty Live (2026)
- Long Way Home Tour (2027)
Supporting act
- For Your Validation Tour (2025) (Alessi Rose)
- Worldwide Hysteria Tour (2025) (Jessie Murph)
- Fragile Egos Tour (2026) (Cameron Whitcomb)
- My Mess, My Heart, My Life Tour (2026) (Myles Smith)
- The Brunette World Tour (2026) (Tucker Wetmore)