Stella Lefty may not have much style or substance as a songwriter, but at least she knows a good hook when she hears it. Lefty, the Groupon heiress born Stella Lefkofsky, scored one of this year's biggest hits with "Boston," a song that lifts its memorable melody from Noah Kahan's "Stick Season" — an accident, allegedly, even though she's covered "Stick Season" online repeatedly. After "Boston" made Lefty a star, people started to notice flickers of other well-known hits in her songs, including a bit of the Chicks' "There's Your Trouble" in "Summer You Were Mine" and a resemblance to Blake Shelton's "I'll Name The Dogs" in "Why Wouldn't We."
Now a fourth song has come under scrutiny. About a month ago, comments began appearing on the YouTube upload for "Misery," a song from Lefty's 2025 EP Tragic, Really, noting its extreme resemblance to "A Million Dreams" from 2017's world-conquering The Greatest Showman soundtrack. The similarity attracted more attention this weekend due to some viral tweets. When you load up "Misery" at the 32-second mark, you can't miss it:
Kahan was retroactively given a writing credit on "Boston," and the writers of the Chicks song, Tia Sillers and Mark Selby, were eventually credited on "Summer You Were Mine." According to Lefty's label Atlantic, the Chicks interpolation was approved in advance, and Sellers and Selby were initially left off the credits due to a "streaming platform error." The writers of Shelton's "I'll Name The Dogs," Ben Hayslip, Josh Thomson, and Matt Dragstrem, have not been credited on "Why Wouldn't We."
As for Lefty's The Greatest Showman lift, per Spotify she wrote "Misery" with Madi Yanofsky and Phil Cook — not the Gayngs/Megafaun guy, a different Phil Cook. The writers of "A Million Dreams," Justin Paul and Benj Paskek plus arranger Rob Mathes, are not credited.
This kind of copying happens fairly often in pop music. Taylor Swift's The Life Of A Showgirl had multiple apparent ripoffs, including the title track blatantly stealing the chorus from the Jonas Brothers' "Cool." But it's happening so often with Lefty, so early in her career, that it's no wonder people are starting to call her Stella Thefty.
