Topline
Stella Lefty, a singer-songwriter whose country-tinged breakout hit “Boston” surged to new heights on the Billboard charts this week, has billionaire roots as the daughter of Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky—though some have questioned whether she’s an “industry plant,” or if she’s ripping singer Noah Kahan’s sound.
Stella Lefty earned her first top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. (Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
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Key Facts
“Boston” surged to No. 6 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, marking Lefty’s first-ever appearance in the flagship chart’s top 10, partially thanks to TikTok virality and radio airplay.
Lefty’s breakout hit has garnered more than 120 million streams on Spotify, by far her most-streamed song since she started releasing music in 2024.
Lefty is the daughter of Eric Lefkofsky, co-founder of Groupon and founder and CEO of healthcare startup Tempus AI, who Forbes estimates is worth $4.8 billion as of Wednesday.
In interviews, Lefty has credited her father with influencing her music taste and work ethic, and joked he’s a big fan of fellow billionaire Taylor Swift, but said she is aware people will have “opinions” about her father’s wealth.
Lefty’s sudden rise has brought her both breakout success and criticism from some who have accused her of being an “industry plant”—and some have criticized “Boston” for imitating the melody of Noah Kahan’s hit “Stick Season,” which Lefty says was unintentional (she gave Kahan writing credits on the song).
Who Is Stella Lefty?
Lefty, a Chicago native, began releasing music in 2024, and she released her first EP, “Is This Heaven?” earlier this year. Lefty broke through on TikTok, where she often posts videos of herself singing and has amassed more than 670,000 followers. “Boston” has been used as a sound in more than 1.6 million posts within just five months of release. The song interpolates—or, recreates the melody of—“Stick Season,” a hit song by singer-songwriter Noah Kahan. Lefty told The Line of Best Fit she wrote the song’s chorus herself and posted it, after which commenters said, “This sounds like ‘Stick Season.’” She said she didn’t mean to incorporate Kahan’s song into her own, but after she posted the chorus, “his team ended up reaching out and we had a conversation about it, and I was just like, ‘I want to do whatever accommodates him.’” Kahan was given credit as a co-writer on “Boston,” a standard practice for interpolations. But some critics aren’t impressed by Lefty’s Kahan inspiration. A critic for Paste Magazine dismissed her as a “Noah Kahan copycat,” calling her song a “poor imitation” of the more “sonically complex” song “Stick Season.” “Maybe originality and authenticity simply don’t matter anymore,” Paste critic Miranda Wollen wrote. On a country music Reddit forum, users debated Lefty’s rise to fame, with one popular post saying Lefty became famous “suspiciously fast,” criticizing her “mass produced carbon copy folk sound” and her similarities to Kahan. The most-upvoted post on the Reddit thread accused her of becoming famous “clearly because of her dad.”
What Has Lefty Said About Her Billionaire Roots?
Lefty told The Line of Best Fit in an interview earlier this month she knows people online will say “negative things” about her billionaire father, but she said she has a close relationship with him and credits him for introducing her to country music. “There’s going to be all these opinions that are thrown around and I totally understand that,” Lefty said, adding she is “very, very close” with her family and considers her father her “favorite person on the planet.” She praised her family as “super hardworking” in an interview with Billboard in May, saying she learned a sense of “grit” from her father. Lefty and her manager, Adam Alpert, acknowledged accusations some internet critics have made that she may be an “industry plant”—a term used as a pejorative against musicians who critics believe achieved their success through nepotism or wealth. “Industry plants don’t exist,” Alpert told Rolling Stone in June, saying Lefty has become successful because she makes “great songs that people like.” Lefty told Rolling Stone the discourse surrounding her success feels “unnatural,” and acknowledged there are “always going to be people who don’t like me or my music, or something about me.”
What Do We Know About Lefkofsky’s Fortune?
Lefkofsky, a career entrepreneur, co-founded marketing company InnerWorkings in 1999 and Echo Global Logistics in 2005, before striking a fortune with Groupon, the discount e-commerce marketplace. He co-founded Groupon in 2008 and became a billionaire in 2011 when the company went public. At the time of Groupon’s initial public offering, Forbes reported Lefkofsky owned 21% of the company’s stock. Shortly after becoming a billionaire, Lefkofsky told Forbes he doesn’t spend much time thinking about his fortune and instead spends his energy on helping the “various businesses we have started or invested in.” In 2015, Lefkofsky founded Tempus, later renamed Tempus AI, a healthcare startup that collects data to allow doctors to personalize cancer treatments. Lefkofsky told Forbes in 2019 he started the company after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, leaving him “just perplexed at how little data had permeated her care.” By 2019, Tempus had raised $520 million, including $100 million from Lefkofsky, and he told Forbes he hoped Tempus would be his “legacy project.” Lefkofsky took Tempus public in 2024, at which time his stake was worth $2.2 billion. Lefkofsky is the No. 876 wealthiest person in the world as of Wednesday, according to Forbes estimates, and he ranks No. 246 on the Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people.
key background
After a writing deal in Nashville fell through, Lefty told Rolling Stone she received a message from producer Jacob Hindlin, who goes by J Kash, known for making hits with Lady Gaga, Kesha, Katy Perry and more pop stars. She signed to Disruptor Records and moved to Los Angeles, where she still lives. Lefty made an appearance at the Stagecoach country music festival in April, and she has performed as an opening act for singers Jessie Murph and Cameron Whitcomb.
further reading
It’s Not Just Yungblud. Stella Lefty Has Also Been Accused of Being an ‘Industry Plant’ (Rolling Stone)
Billionaire Groupon Founder Eric Lefkofsky’s Health Tech Company Goes Public—His Fourth IPO (Forbes)