Stella Lefty Faces Third Plagiarism Claim Over New Album
Singer Stella Lefty is accused of copying a third hit song, Blake Shelton's 'I'll Name The Dogs,' on her new album 'Long Way Home.' This follows earlier
Stella Lefty's debut album 'Long Way Home' is facing a third plagiarism accusation. Viral posts in recent days have compared her track 'Why Wouldn't We' to Blake Shelton's 2017 number-one Country Airplay hit 'I'll Name The Dogs.'
According to the source, the chorus melodies of the two songs are more or less identical, right down to the you do the this, I do the that lyrical conceit. At the time of the report, songwriting credits for 'Why Wouldn't We' on Tidal listed Stella Lefty, Emily Weisband, Grady Block, and Steph Jones. The writers of 'I'll Name The Dogs' - Matt Dragstrem, Ben Hayslip, and Josh Thompson - were not credited.
Earlier Allegations on the Album
This new claim follows two previous controversies tied to the album's release. Lefty's current smash 'Boston,' the #2 song in America, was widely noted for sounding very, very similar to Noah Kahan's 2022 hit 'Stick Season.' Lefty later added a songwriting credit for Kahan. She insisted, 'When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all.' This statement was complicated by the fact that Lefty has posted many, many covers of 'Stick Season' online, sometimes introducing them by saying stuff like, 'This is for Noah and only Noah.'
Another track, 'Summer You Were Mine,' was quickly identified as a limp retread of the (formerly Dixie) Chicks' 1998 Grammy-winning number-one country song 'There's Your Trouble.' The song's writers, Tia Sillers and Mark Selby, were not initially credited but were added later. Lefty's label, Atlantic, told Rolling Stone this was an approved interpolation and blamed the initial omission on what the magazine described as a 'streaming platform error.'
The Pattern and Response
The sequence of events has sparked discussion about originality and credit in pop music. The source frames the incidents with a tone of incredulous humor, noting that Lefty is the daughter of Groupon's billionaire co-founder and calling the whole thing 'a fantastic bit.' It was also noted on the New York Times Popcast that 'Boston' was 'on the Stick Season riddim,' suggesting a dancehall-style approach to borrowing. Each case followed a similar trajectory: public identification of similarity, followed by a belated adjustment to official songwriting credits.
The label has attributed at least one credit omission to a technical error. No direct statement from Lefty addressing the Shelton comparison was included in the source at the time of reporting. The report concludes by speculating lightheartedly about what classic song might be reinterpreted next, with the writer stating, 'I can't wait until she drops something like "I Will Always Hug You."'
