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Noah Kahan has followed Stella Lefty on Instagram, with fans interpreting this as a show of support for the ‘Boston’ prodigy amid all the backlash Lefty has been receiving online.
Lefty has been getting flak for months now, after fans found out that Kahan was credited as a songwriter on her viral hit ‘Boston’, due to the song seemingly having similar melodies to the Vermont native's iconic 2024 single, ‘Stick Season’.
As Lefty explained in an interview Vanity Fair this summer, Kahan's credit was added after his team reached out. Lefty made it clear she wasn't actively intending to interpolate ‘Stick Season’ or any of Kahan's music, “When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all”.
She recalled how his team got in touch, stating, “We think this sounds similar”, with the ‘I Know I Know’ hitmaker underlining that she was happy to add the credit, “I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good”.
Lefty has since been the subject of a torrent of online trolling and criticism, with fans pointing out that her recently released song, ‘Summer You Were Mine’, sounded similar to The Chicks’ ‘There's Your Trouble’. The Chicks are credited on the song.
What's more, Lefty has been facing accusations of being a “nepo-baby”, due to her father being the founder of Groupon. After she made her Grand Ole Opry debut last week, the online barrage reached a boiling point, with Kelsea Ballerini having to step in and defend the ‘Thinking ‘bout You’ singer-songwriter via Instagram.
It has felt like, throughout the ‘Boston’ and ‘Stick Season’ furore, this was more of a matter between Lefty and Kahan's teams, rather than Lefty and Kahan themselves.
Given Kahan's reputation as one of the kindest artists in music, and one that is always happy to try and lift up and celebrate younger artists, we struggled to believe that there was any bad blood between the ‘Orange Juice’ crooner and Lefty over all this.
Seeing Kahan is now following Lefty on Instagram, we're hoping Lefty's critics take this as a sign that there's no rivalry or bitterness over ‘Boston’ being similar to ‘Stick Season’.
The hate Lefty has been receiving online has undoubtedly gone way too far, and we're glad to see fellow artists like Ballerini, Kahan and Lefty's boyfriend, Vincent Mason, taking to social media to show their support in varying ways for the Illinois prodigy.
Lefty's new album, Long Way Home, is chock full of infectious melodies, bright instrumentation and playful lyricism, and deserves to be championed for what it is, rather than constantly dragged and dismissed simply because of who Lefty's father is.
We're hoping that Kahan following Lefty (it's unclear exactly when Kahan started following her) is the first step towards a link-up, and we'd love to see these two folk-leaning artists silencing the haters once and for all and joining forces on a song.
