Although I cannot claim to be first to the rise of Stella Lefty, I would like to think I was early. I am a certified Stella Fella.
However, it did not take long for me to notice the conversation surrounding her billionaire dad, Eric Lefkofsky.
“Lefty” is a stage name used only for music. It is a shortened version of Stella’s last name!
Who is Eric Lefkofsky?
Stella Lefty’s dad is 56 years old. He was born and raised in West Bloomfield, Michigan — an affluent suburb of Detroit — and graduated from the University of Michigan.
Not too long after college, Eric Lefkofsky and his friend borrowed money from their relatives to purchase a clothing company in Madison, Wisconsin. And then they turned their attention to the internet. They created Starbelly in 1999. The company sold to Halo Industries just one year later.
From there, Lefkofsky co-founded a freight logistics company, a firm that provides print procurement services for mid-sized companies and a company that provided technology for advertising buyers. In 2007, he invested $1 million in funding to a collective action website known as ThePoint.com. The Point eventually changed its name to Groupon.
Groupon was valued at $1.35 billion in 2010. Google at one point offered $6 billion. Lefkofsky served as CEO from 2013-2016, at which point he stepped down and returned to his role as chairman.
Meanwhile, Lefkofsky was also an early investor in a predictive analytics company called Uptake Technologies and founded Tempus AI. Tempus enables physicians to deliver personalized cancer care to patients. He currently serves as the CEO.
All of this goes to say that Eric Lefkofsky has a lot of money. According to Forbes, his net worth is estimated at $5.9 billion, which makes him one of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world.
Stella Lefty says she is not a ‘Nepo Baby.’
Stella Lefkofsky, known professionally as Stella Lefty, is on a meteoric rise to country music stardom. It is a little bit weird for a girl from an affluent Chicago suburb, who went to Tulane and lives in Los Angeles, to be classified as “country” but the genre continues to grow in terms of what it encapsulates. And it’s not like her music doesn’t have a hint of twang.
Regardless of where you put Lefty, she is crushing the charts. Her breakout single ‘Boston’ reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her EP debuted at No. 9 on the Top Country Albums list in May. She just released her first full-length album on Aug. 21.
When CMA Fest booked Lefty as a last-minute add in early June, she was placed at the smallest stage of the entire festival. The crowd ended up being so big that local police had to shut down the entire block.
It has been a rollercoaster journey over the last year but it just keeps going up. And yet, no matter what she does or how much success she has, Stella Lefty cannot shake the comments about her billionaire dad. As described by Vanity Fair:
Critics have jumped to call Lefty a “nepo baby” (though according to VF’s own definition, the term doesn’t technically apply). On a reposted version of the original “Boston” TikTok, a user named @kylewins22 urges Lefty to “go ahead and slide those 2 weeks [notice] in to wherever you work.” A legion of sleuths inform Kyle that Lefty does not, in fact, work anywhere.
Responding to the song’s key lyric, “On a train back to Boston / and we’re jumping the gun,” others wonder if Lefty has ever actually been on a train before. (“I guess ‘private jet back to Boston’ isn’t as catchy,” a user named @mango_chunk commented.)
She’s also been accused of being an equally despised “industry plant”—a charge not helped by the fact that she is a country singer, twang and all, with no claim to the South other than a Georgia-born boyfriend and a degree from Tulane. (Compare Lefty’s “Boston” to Alabama-born Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” and the joke writes itself.)
Speculation abounds about whether, and how much, Lefty’s rise has been accelerated, or even bought, by her personal funds and the attendant privileges that come with them.
— Abigal Sylvor Greenberg, Vanity Fair
Lefty gets it. She is the daughter of a multi-billionaire… with a B.
“Obviously there’s going to be this conversation around it, which I totally understand,” Lefty told Vanity Fair. “Me and my dad have spoken about this a lot since I even started music. He was like, ‘The truth will set you free.'”
Even if her dad’s wealth allowed her more time than most, she rejects the idea that money bought her success.
“I had the ability to really explore, and I didn’t have a stopwatch. I felt like I had this cushion.”
Some of Lefty’s success is dumb luck. Some of it comes from a targeted approach to social media. None of it comes from bribery or anything like that. You can certainly try, and money obviously does help, but you can’t pay your way to the top of the charts.
The music still has to be good. People still have to like and listen to the song.
If it were possible to buy a hit record, Lefty told Vanity Fair that “every record label would make every single artist on the label the biggest thing in the world.” Fair enough!