The billionaire’s pop-star daughter derailed by a ‘plagiarism’ scandal
The billionaire’s pop-star daughter derailed by a ‘plagiarism’ scandal
Eleanor HallsTue, September 15, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC
0
Stella Lefty’s rapid rise from TikTok covers to chart success has attracted intense scrutiny in recent months - Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Stagecoach
Stella Lefty may be regretting having changed her last name. Over the past few weeks, the daughter of American billionaire Eric Lefkofsky, who started releasing country-pop music as “Lefty” in 2024, has earned the unfortunate nickname “Stella Thefty”. Since releasing her debut album Long Way Home last month, the 24-year-old has been at the centre of a highly public and increasingly vicious plagiarism controversy involving no less than five songs, which has prompted the accusation she may be using AI to write them (along with adopting a “fake” Southern twang) and a flurry of anti-Semitic abuse.
Lefty had been receiving flak for being a dreaded “nepo baby” (though it is perhaps more accurate to call her a “billionaire baby”) and “industry plant” as a result of her “suspiciously” fast ascent through the music industry.
She first started going viral at the end of last year, when she uploaded the hook for a song she was working on, Thinking ’bout You, which proved so catchy that fans were begging her to release it. She then signed to a subsidiary of major label Atlantic Records, and in March released the love song Boston. It quickly climbed the Billboard charts – since her album release, it sits above Taylor Swift at number two. On Spotify, Boston has amassed a whopping 199 million streams.
Chicago-born Lefty’s song Boston has amassed 199 million streams on Spotify Credit: Getty/Disney/Randy Holmes - Randy Holmes/Getty Images
Yet the song’s success also led to further scrutiny. Listeners noticed that it was uncannily similar to Noah Kahan’s hugely popular 2022 hit Stick Season, and his team ended up getting in touch with Lefty to organise a retrospective songwriting credit. Lefty said she didn’t mean to interpolate his melody, yet fans who were familiar with Lefty’s early TikTok account “Stella Lefty Covers”, where she would post covers of her favourite songs while studying public health at Tulane University in New Orleans, noticed she had covered Stick Season numerous times. (Curiously, these videos have since been deleted.)
In a Vanity Fair profile from August, Lefty addressed the situation, saying: “When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good.”
More melodic similarities have since emerged, from Lefty’s Why Wouldn’t We and Blake Shelton’s 2017 song I’ll Name the Dogs to Lefty’s Seven Eleven and Wheatus’ Noughties rock hit Teenage Dirtbag. Most obvious is the mirroring of The Greatest Showman’s A Million Dreams in Lefty’s song Misery, which sounds like it might well have been and pasted from the 2017 smash-hit musical. Lefty’s song Summer You Were Mine was also accused of mimicking the Chicks’ 1998 track There’s Your Trouble – a song Lefty had previously told Rolling Stone she adored.
Noah Kahan received a retrospective songwriting credit on Lefty’s hit Boston after similarities to his 2022 song Stick Season were noticed - Getty/James Smith/Sam Snap
In an unfortunate coincidence, it turned out that the credit for the Chicks’ songwriters Tia Sillers and Mark Selby had accidentally been left off streaming services, which was proved by Rolling Stone, who said that the magazine “reviewed materials that showed Lefty’s team had received proper clearance for the track from Sony Publishing in June, and that Sillers and Selby were noted on the track’s credits in internal label documents in late July before the album’s release.”
But the fact that this mistake was genuine didn’t matter to Lefty’s critics. The pile-on shows no signs of abating, and hundreds of scathing comments litter Lefty’s TikTok, where she has amassed nearly 800,000 followers in just six months, with many of them bringing up her dad, who founded Groupon and Tempus AI and who Forbes estimates is worth in excess of $5bn.
Advertisement
As one reads: “girl you never took a train to Boston you took your dad’s limo.” Another posted on X: “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.” Lefkofsky is Jewish, and some users have posted anti-Semitic comments calling her “StellAviv” and apparently edited her Wikipedia page to falsely claim she served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Lefty’s billionaire father, Eric Lefkofsky, founded Groupon and Tempus AI - Getty/Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service
None of this abuse is justified, yet it belies Gen Z’s increasing frustration with people who queue jump their way to success through family connections and privilege.
In the last five years, the term “nepo baby” has become ubiquitous as celebrity offspring have come of age and come into the spotlight, from the daughters of Judd Apatow, JJ Abrams, Kate Winslet and Kate Moss, to the sons of Bono, David Beckham and Cillian Murphy. It’s impossible to hate them all – there are simply too many – so the rule for absolution seems to be: are you actually any good? Money can buy you time, but it won’t excuse mediocrity. Gracie Abrams (daughter of JJ Abrams) fell foul of this last month when she released a dud album, while Lefty’s fans feel betrayed that her biggest hit may not have been really hers after all.
Plagiarism is remarkably common in songwriting. There are only 12 notes in Western music, and scores of songs unintentionally mirror each other – which is why Ed Sheeran won the suit accusing him of copying Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, and George Harrison was only sentenced with “subconscious plagiarism” when his song My Sweet Lord was accused of stealing from the Chiffons’ 1963 hit He’s So Fine. In fact, one fascinating YouTube video about “the Gen Alpha melody”, with 4.2 million views, reveals how everyone from Bruno Mars and Lewis Capaldi to Troye Sivan and Clairo keep returning to near-identical choruses in pop.
Lefty has previously expressed concerns about how not being Southern would impact perceptions of her country music - Monica Schipper/Getty Images
The real problem is that Lefty’s music just isn’t good enough for any of this not to matter. Derivative and bland, it’s also stuffed with tropes from the country genre that feel twice as empty as they sound once you realise Lefty was born in Chicago and lives in Los Angeles. Lefty said she “grew up” on country music and Keith Whitley was her “rinse and repeat”, which might be why she has affected a country-lite accent. “I’m not Southern. I always worried, ‘Do I have to be?’” Lefty told Rolling Stone. “I love country music more than anything.”
On September 2, she even performed Boston at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was defended by country singer Kelsea Ballerini, who wrote on Instagram: “the Opry is about honouring the legacies and the people that have inspired both me and her!” But, as per one Reddit thread: “it feels like she is a rich girl from Chicago playing dress up, with daddy’s money.”
Unfortunately for Stella Lefty’s haters, however, she may have had the last laugh. A few days ago, she sold out her headline tour just two weeks after it was announced. Perhaps all press is good press, after all.
Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
