Stella Lefty Plagiarism Claims: Why a Music Expert Says the Similarities Aren't Theft

Stella Lefty has had a whirlwind year. Viral hit, debut album, and a fast climb up the charts. But along with the success came a wave of online accusations that several of her songs sound an awful lot like older hits, including Noah Kahan’s“Stick Season.”Fans even coined a nickname for her:“Stella Thefty.”Kahan was later added to the writing credits on her song“Boston,”and Atlantic Records said two songwriters were accidentally left off the streaming credits for“Summer You Were Mine.”

So is any of it actual plagiarism? According to Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music, probably not. Bennett analyzed the disputed songs and found that the overlaps come down to basic chord progressions and short melodic fragments, the kind of thing that happens constantly in country and pop music. In his words, coincidental similarity between short bits of melody is way more common than people think. Similar-sound disputes almost always get resolved with shared credits or interpolations rather than lawsuits.

There’s a separate conversation worth having about Lefty’s background. She’s the daughter of Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky, who’s worth an estimated $5.5 billion, and that has fueled plenty of“nepo baby”and“industry plant”chatter. Country star Kelsea Ballerini has publicly defended her through all of it. Both things can be true: Lefty had advantages most artists never get, and the songs may not actually be stolen.

What do you think? Where’s the line between a familiar-sounding melody and outright copying?