Ella Langley’s ‘Choosin’ Texas‘ might have lost the top spot of the Hot 100 to Taylor Swift, but it’s been hanging in there at #2. In fact, Swift’s other three new songs debuted at #3-5, unable to fully dislodge the country smash.

At #3 this week is Stella Lefty’s ‘Boston,’ in its 28th week on the chart. It cracked the top 20 in June and has been kicking around the top five for more than a month, peaking at #2.

This modest country pop song has generated a ton of discourse, around both its composition and Lefty herself. Lefty is dismissed by her detractors as an “industry plant” who owes her success not to hard work and talent but to the connections of her billionaire father, Eric Lefkofsky, the co-founder of Groupon.

Lefty grew up in a wealthy Chicago suburb, attended Tulane University, studied abroad in Amsterdam, and lives in Los Angeles, a bio that doesn’t necessarily align with her preference for country music, a genre that thrives on authenticity.

I think country music has a much bigger tent these days, so I don’t fault her for not fitting the profile. As for the nepo baby charges, I acknowledge she has had opportunities most aspiring musicians never will, but at the end of the day I’m going to judge a performer on her songs, not her parents’ Wikipedia page.

As for the song, the big controversy around ‘Boston’ is that its chorus bears a striking similarity to the verses of Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season.’ Lefty claims she hadn’t considered Kahan’s song at all while writing hers, though multiple old videos of her performing ‘Stick Season’ in her bedroom suggest otherwise.

Kahan’s publishers chimed in before ‘Boston’ was even officially released, and he received songwriting credit on the track.

Lefty has gone on to release a few more tracks that have been compared to other popular songs, giving her a reputation as a plagiarist (she was even parodied on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live).

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