Many people are currently asking themselves, “Who is Stella Lefty?” and the answer is not as clear as it seems. While she is a musician, it has also come out that her father, Eric Lefkofsky, is the chief executive officer of Tempus Artificial Intelligence and is one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth of $6.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Lefkofsky made the majority of his fortune from the daily deals section of Groupon, which he, along with Andrew Mason and Brad Keywell, founded. Lefkofsky and Keywell also founded the venture capital firm Lightbank. Lightbank has made investments in over 100 companies.
Because of her father's wealth, people have been using the terms “nepo baby” and "industry plant” to describe Lefty. The term “nepo baby” refers to a person who uses their parents' connections, wealth or fame to further their own career or success. “Industry plant” refers to when someone is “planted” in the industry, or is secretly backed by a label or using other connections to grow while trying to appear self-made.
For the general public, it does seem like her songs just came out of nowhere, but she did get her start a few years ago. Lefty officially started her music career in 2023 with her single “Stay.” Before that, she posted covers of other musicians' songs on TikTok and Instagram.
But accusations of being an industry plant aren’t Lefty's biggest controversy; her newest and most popular single “Boston,” from her album “Long Way Home,” is currently being accused of plagiarizing Noah Kahan’s song “Stick Season,” off of his 2022 album with the same name. “Stick Season” was one of her most covered songs online before writing and releasing her own music.
Once people noticed the first similarities, more of her songs have been under fire for sounding similar to other artists' work. People are saying that her song “Misery” from her 2025 EP “Tragic, Really,” sounds like “A Million Dreams” from the soundtrack of the 2017 motion picture “The Greatest Showman." Also, her 2025 single “seven eleven” has been accused of sounding like Wheatus’ 2000 hit song “Teenage Dirtbag.” Another song said to be similar is Lefty’s 2026 song “Why Wouldn’t We” and Blake Shelton's 2017 song “I’ll Name The Dogs.”
Since these plagiarism allegations started, Lefty has taken down all of her covers on TikTok, but some users have reposted the videos on their own accounts. On other social media platforms, the public has made many remarks about the situation. Including quotes like “Kinda the funniest thing ever to be like ‘I wasn’t really thinking about Stick Season when I wrote my song’ then have like 17 different videos of you singing it on the internet,” or “it’s kind of a great strategy to just hack your way up the charts by riffing on already popular songs, giving away all your songwriting royalties because you are heir to the Groupon fortune and don’t need them anyway,” which are both from different X users.
Her team is aware of the similarities between Lefty’s songs and other artists, because her 2026 song “Summer You Were Mine” is an approved interpolation of The Chicks’ 1998 song “There’s Your Trouble,” off of their album “Wide Open Spaces.” An approved interpolation is a legal agreement in the music industry that gives an artist permission from the original copyright holders to re-record or re-perform a melody, chord or lyric from a pre-existing song. A common example of an approved interpolation is Ariana Grande’s song “7 Rings” using the melody from "My Favorite Things” in “The Sound of Music."
Lefty responded to the “Stick Season” accusations in a Vanity Fair article, where she said, “When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all.” She also admitted her team said the songs sounded similar, so they gave Kahan a writing credit on the song to prevent the risk of legal action.
Whether Lefty purposely plagiarized or not, the controversy has certainly boosted her name recognition in a way that may not have happened otherwise. After “Boston” was on the cover of Spotify’s May Hot Country playlist, her monthly listeners doubled to nearly 15 million. In addition, it also climbed the charts on the Top 100, peaking at second place and was on the list for 23 weeks. This is the most public her name has been known, but after the controversy dies down, will she keep the public's attention? Only time can tell.
