Evaluate: Stella Lefty has no clue the place she’s happening her debut album

It’s awfully handy that Stella Lefkofsky can abbreviate her final identify to “Lefty.” Not solely does it forge a long way from her father, billionaire Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky, but it surely additionally grants the 24-year-old singer-songwriter an affiliation with one of many greatest country songs ever made. Critics aren’t precisely speeding to call Stella Lefty one of the best new factor out of Nashville (she lives in LA), however her stage identify does really feel like a fairly blatant assertion of some larger aspiration. Thank God that Townes Van Zandt died earlier than he heard “Boston.”

To Lefty’s credit score, she not less than doesn’t fake that her dad had no affect in anyway on her profession. She guarantees she’d nonetheless be doing this no matter her father’s career; he’s one of many richest folks in America, however he’s additionally a very common man who loves fashionable nation music. “Country radio was blasting in the car no matter where we were going,” Lefty as soon as recalled. Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw, and Taylor Swift thus turned her early artistic guiding lights, though most of these household drives they soundtracked doubtless occurred in and round Glencoe—the extremely prosperous Chicago suburb the place Lefty was raised—reasonably than Tennessee or Texas. Lefty took guitar classes as a younger little one, too, however stage fright held her again from performing the songs she’d written. It wasn’t till she was learning public well being at Tulane (I suppose New Orleans personal college was shut sufficient to the South) that she made a vital discovery: lots of nation singers don’t write their songs. She got down to change into an expert songwriter, fortunately protecting her personal identification at arm’s size from the music she’d be making.

But typically, a extra profitable technique to circumvent stage fright is to only sing to your cellphone as a substitute. After a few years of posting front-camera acoustic covers to TikTookay—together with myriad renditions of Noah Kahan’s folksy smash “Stick Season”—Lefty’s rasp started catching the eye of business veterans, who would possibly’ve additionally observed she had lots of time to spend doing self-promotion. Subsequently, TikTookay turned floor zero for Lefty’s breakout hit “Boston” this previous March, which is legendary largely as a result of it sounds so much like Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.” Finding out artists don’t at all times write the songs they sing, it appears, actually did alter Lefty’s profession trajectory in any case.

In August, 4 months after “Boston” left the prepare station, the tune was included on Lefty’s debut album Long Way Home. Half of its 14 songs first appeared on her May EP Is This Heaven?, a launch technique that portends a race towards the vicissitudes of social media relevancy. The songs on Long Way Home positive really feel like they had been churned out on a time crunch, and the proof is within the puddin’: past “Boston,” “Why Wouldn’t We” boasts incriminating similarities to Blake Shelton’s 2017 tune “I’ll Name the Dogs,” “Summer You Were Mine” feels like for those who eliminated every little thing nice from The Chicks’ “There’s Your Trouble,” and I doubt I’m the primary to note the likenesses between “Good at Leaving” and Justin Bieber’s “Ghost.” Interpolations could make for thrilling musical moments if the artist doing so has a robust standpoint of their very own; Lefty’s standpoint, nevertheless, is tragically nearsighted.

Long Way Home follows a painfully unimaginative method. A good-looking, whiskey-drinkin’ man catches Lefty’s consideration. We be taught little about him except for his affinity for whiskey—4 completely different songs right here point out whiskey as a result of she’s a nation star, dammit— and the truth that he smells like cigarettes, has chest tattoos, and possibly isn’t searching for something severe with Lefty, who admits on “Good at Leaving” that she’s fairly emotionally unavailable herself. Riveting stuff! One man did throw a wrench in Lefty’s technique, although: her now-boyfriend, the guy rising nation star Vincent Mason. He’s the inspiration behind songs like “Boston” and “Something to Lose,” the latter of which is a duet by the 2 of them. If you’ll be able to consider it, they met throughout a songwriting journey in Nashville: “There I was, out of place / 2 a.m. in a southern state,” Lefty sings, fairly a conspicuous lyric from a newcomer who simply headlined the Grand Ole Opry.

Not each country-pop hit must unveil deep truths about its narrator, but it surely ought to not less than sound catchy. That’s merely not the case for Long Way Home, the place fundamental chord progressions and unremarkable instrumentals fail to make up for Lefty’s uninspired declarations: “Thinking ‘bout You” does not make me think of anybody, “Slow Dancin’” doesn’t make me need to dance, and “Feel Better” makes me really feel worse. The solely tune on the album that doesn’t reference a love curiosity, “Feel Better,” is the place Lefty admits that she, too, typically crumbles underneath “the weight of the world”: “Yeah, on paper, I’d say everything’s great / But when will I feel better?” It’s frustratingly shallow as it’s—and if you do not forget that Lefty has by no means wanted to work a day in her life, it’s nearly insulting.

Maybe that’s the crux of Lefty’s on-line scrutiny: the truth that she has all of the world’s sources at her disposal, and all she has to indicate for it’s forty minutes of songs that sound like different songs and lyrics that recall different lyrics. She may afford to make use of one of the best songwriters and performers, or she may take the time to creatively problem herself and—god forbid—learn a e book. I’ve listened to 14 Stella Lefty songs and have but to glean any new details about Stella Lefty as an individual, as a result of completely nothing is at stake apart from her already-fleeting virality. Rich children can nonetheless make good artwork; non-Southerners can nonetheless make good nation music. But doing so, on the very least, requires a hook and a narrative to inform. [Atlantic Outpost]

Abby Jones is a contributor to Paste whose writing has additionally appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, and extra. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on X (@abbyfjones_) or e mail her at [email protected].