Yeah man, this Stella Lefty album is not good.

This is the debut full-length album of singer-songwriter Stella Lefkofsky, somebody who's had a pretty meteoric rise in the music industry over the last few months, with one of her singles, "Boston" just climbing the charts at an incredible pace. Could even go number one if it ever ends up posing a threat to Ms. Ella Langley, who is really the queen of the charts at the moment.

And not to besmirch the good name of Ms. Langley, but I do think her and Stella have quite a bit in common aesthetically or that they both have music that is doing so well commercially at the moment really kind of speaks to the musical paradigm that we're in culturally right now. That you can have these singles with absolutely unstoppable momentum in the top 10 for week after week. And instrumentally, aesthetically they're really just paint-by-numbers generic country pop tunes.

And in the case of Ella Langley I can squint and kind of see it. The appeal is there in her vocal range, in her authentic accent, and in some of the cutesy wordplay in "Choosin' Texas." In comparison, the song "Boston" has no such qualities.

In fact, as far as a song in the top 10 is concerned, it may be one of the worst written of the year. Not only due to its extremely derivative nature–because the track is already earning Mr. Noah Kahan residuals because of its clear melodic similarities to the track "Stick Season." A song I can only imagine Stella couldn't help but incorporate into her own work, because if you look at her TikTok she's covered the song so many goddamn times it's gotta be intertwined with her DNA at this point.

But yeah, song is obviously derivative. But then there's the lyrics. Which speak of a love, of a crush that you're really falling into foolishly, with no inhibitions whatsoever.

But Stella absolutely miserably fails to bring the audience into this experience at all due to not only a complete lack of poetic detail, but even the positive descriptions that she makes of this dynamic that are supposed to be charming just completely fall flat because what the fuck? "I like it when you're nice to me." Yeah, no shit. So does everyone.

But I'm kinda getting ahead of myself because just talking about the mediocrity of Ms. Stella's music here is not the full story. Because Stella and her music at the moment are drizzling in a much greater controversy: that she is a nepo baby. Because her dad is a billionaire–one of the co-founders of Groupon.

And there's been a lot of debate and back and forth about whether or not Stella's background contributed in any way to the popularity of her music right now. And while I wouldn't say there's absolute dead-to-rights proof that "Boston" is only as popular as it is currently because her dad or other people in the industry she's somehow connected to are making it so. But you can't really deny that Stella's affluent background gives her the means and the time and the focus to do what is important as an artist, which according to her, constantly posting and spending hours of time on her phone.

Because Stella's popularity I think more than her father is much due to the TikTok-fication of the music industry. And this is evidenced in Stella's non-stop feed of her lip-syncing her own music again and again and again and again and again.

But it's not like Stella's music industry connections have been cropping up as recently as the popularity of "Boston." Because believe it or not that track and an EP that it has been placed on dropped earlier in the year around spring. But before even that Stella had an EP that came out back in 2025, which for an artist who's just starting out, is frankly pretty well produced.

And then also in February of this year a placement on the Scream 7 soundtrack? Which honestly I feel like is even more damning evidence than any amount of money her father has. Because how are you–after a couple of singles and an EP in 2025 and 2024, and no hits whatsoever–somehow landing a prominent soundtrack placement on a highly anticipated sequel to a major film franchise?

That's not the kind of opportunity you get a hold of as an artist just because you post on TikTok a lot. So look here's the thing.

I think Stella has been getting built up for some level of industry success for a minute now. But the virality of "Boston," her and her team may not have completely foreseen. Because I think once the song started popping off it became a rush to essentially get some kind of album to market and then put out a bunch of tour dates as a means of capitalizing off of the song being so hot.

And while it currently remains to be seen whether or not anybody's actually going to be making it out to that tour–what is clear after listening to this album is just how thrown the fuck together it is. Because I think they were just kind of trying to capitalize off the fact that "Boston" is doing so well right now. Because there is no possible way that Stella and her collaborators spent any lengthy amount of time preconceiving and mapping out these songs and really working out the details.

Because fuck are these tracks uninspired. The melodies are derivative. The production is bland as hell.

Almost every piece of instrumentation sounds like a midi instrument out of GarageBand. The guitars are so lifeless. The attempts at multi-track vocal harmonies are so lazy–the additional layers aren't even mixed lower than the lead.

This is like the definition of slapping shit together. It's like such a lazy hack job of an album that Stella kind of proves that over the course of 15 tracks?

14!

Sorry, I can barely remember because the whole thing is so goddamn forgettable. She proves she doesn't even have the capacity to write herself out of a paper bag.

With nearly every song on this album being about just having a crush on someone. And again, after so many tracks you would think even an interesting or compelling detail about these significant others or their relationship would crop up at some point. But goddamn Stella just doesn't have anything to say on any of these tracks–is afraid to even get into the simplest of specifics.

There's even one hilarious line where she talks about it being "2am in a southern state."

Which one?!

There's so many southern states but given that Stella's southern accent she fakes throughout the entirety of this record is so transparently a put-on. I don't know maybe she doesn't know which one to pick.

She can't name that many. Could be Louisiana. Could be Alabama.Who the hell knows?

And as bad as "Boston" is, some of the deep cuts are even more laughable. Like on "Forever Guy," where she whines and cries, "So why do I cry? / You were never a forever guy."

Again there's not an element of this album that does not feel like some kind of nefarious marketing intention is going into it. Even the bandana wrapped around Stella's head looks like it was freshly purchased off of Amazon and tied for the first time right there for that photo.

This whole record reeks of cheap manufacturing and same-day shipping. It's about as country as cornbread on the McDonald's menu.

It's that disgustingly uninspired. Can we please move on to something else? This is such a terrible time for culture. Which is why this Stella Lefty album is not good.