Stella Lefty Interpolates The Chicks’ ‘There’s Your Trouble’ on New Album

Stella Lefty is having a big year. She has a debut album, a breakout hit, a growing fan base and a 2027 headlining tour already on the calendar. There is just one small complication: two of her songs sounds very familiar.

Her latest case involves The Chicks, and this time, the songwriting credits were supposed to be handled before anyone heard the song, according to Rolling Stone.

“Summer You Were Mine,” a track from Lefty’s debut album Long Way Home, borrows from The Chicks’ 1998 hit “There’s Your Trouble.” Fans noticed the resemblance after the album arrived on August 21st, but the original songwriters, Tia Sillers and Mark Selby, were initially missing from the credits on streaming services.

Atlantic Records says that was a platform error. Lefty’s team had received clearance from Sony Publishing in June, and internal documents listed Sillers and Selby as writers before the album came out. Their names have since been added to the credits.

So, unlike a case where an artist quietly borrows from another song and gets caught afterward, this one appears to be more of a paperwork problem.

And there is an important difference in exactly what Lefty borrowed.

Lefty did not take a piece of The Chicks’ actual recording and drop it into “Summer You Were Mine.” Instead, the new song recreates recognizable parts of the original.

That distinction matters.

In music, a sample generally means using audio from an existing recording. Think of it as taking a piece of the original sound recording and placing it into a new song. What Lefty did is different because the borrowing involves parts of the underlying song, such as its melody, lyrics or other songwriting elements.

Either way, permission usually needs to be worked out before the new song is released.

Tia Sillers, who co-wrote “There’s Your Trouble” with her late husband Selby, does not appear upset about the situation. In fact, she seems to see a potential upside.

She told Rolling Stone that she hopes Lefty’s listeners might hear where the melody came from and discover The Chicks’ material in the process.

That would be a pretty good outcome for everyone involved. A new country artist gets to release her song, the original writers receive credit, and some young listeners might suddenly find themselves digging through a country catalog from nearly three decades ago.

“There’s Your Trouble” appeared on Wide Open Spaces and earned The Chicks a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

But the timing of all this makes the situation a little more interesting.

The “Summer You Were Mine” conversation comes just after Lefty spent the week explaining another song that listeners thought they had heard before.

Her breakout single “Boston” drew immediate comparisons to Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season,” particularly around its chorus. Kahan’s representatives eventually reached out about the similarity, and Lefty’s team added him as a songwriter before the track was officially released rather than risk a legal dispute.

Lefty has said she did not set out to copy Kahan.

“When I was writing the song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan,” Lefty recently told Vanity Fair. “I was literally thinking about nothing at all.”

She said that after Kahan’s team approached hers, she had no issue sharing the credit: “I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good.”

That sounds pretty straightforward. Then the internet did what the internet does best: it found receipts.

Videos resurfaced this week showing Lefty repeatedly covering “Stick Season” on TikTok before her breakout. In some of the clips, she called Kahan one of her favorite artists and performed her own variations on the song.

That does not automatically prove that “Boston” was intentionally modeled on “Stick Season.” But it certainly makes the explanation more awkward.

For fans, the question becomes less about whether two songs sound alike and more about how much of a connection there was before the comparisons started.

There is also another part of Lefty’s story that has followed her rise: her family background.

Lefty, born Stella Lefkofsky, is the daughter of Groupon co-founder and Tempus AI CEO Eric Lefkofsky, whose fortune Forbes currently estimates at nearly $6 billion.

Her background has fueled plenty of “nepo baby” and “industry-plant” chatter around her rapid ascent. Lefty has acknowledged that her family’s wealth gave her the freedom to pursue music full-time.

That does not determine whether her music is good, bad or deserving of an audience. It does, however, make her unusually quick rise something people are naturally going to examine closely.

And right now, there is certainly plenty to examine.

First, “Boston” gets compared to Noah Kahan. Then old TikTok clips show Lefty performing Kahan’s music. Now “Summer You Were Mine” sounds strikingly similar to a major hit by The Chicks, with the original songwriters eventually appearing in the credits.

None of that necessarily means Lefty intentionally copied anyone. Songwriters can arrive at similar melodies, chord patterns and ideas, especially within the same musical styles. But when those similarities keep appearing, people are going to pay attention.

The timing is especially notable because Lefty is moving incredibly quickly.

After posting music online and spending time pursuing straightforward pop, she leaned fully into country at the end of 2025. Soon after, she broke through.

Her debut album Long Way Home arrived last week, and she has already mapped out a 2027 North American headlining run behind it.

That is a lot of momentum for an artist who only recently made the full switch to country.

It also means the spotlight is getting brighter at exactly the moment when people are starting to look more closely at her songwriting.

For now, the “Summer You Were Mine” situation appears to have a simple explanation: the proper writers were supposed to be credited, the paperwork was there, and the missing names were blamed on a platform error.

The “Boston” situation is a little messier because of those resurfaced videos.

Still, Lefty is not slowing down. Her music is reaching more people, her tour plans are getting bigger, and fans are clearly paying attention.

If the songwriting credits keep making headlines, though, she may want to reserve a seat on that tour bus for her lawyer.