Stella Lefty is facing allegations of plagiarism once again – this time for similarities between one of her songs and a 2017 hit from Blake Shelton.
Her song in question is ‘Why Wouldn’t We’, which she released as a single earlier this year and also featured on her debut album ‘Long Way Home’ which arrived last month.
Since it arrived, some people online have gone on to highlight some common ground with Shelton’s ‘I’ll Name The Dogs’, which dropped in 2017 and went on to win Song of the Year at the Nashville Songwriter Awards the following year.
Not only are there some similarities between the music and melodies, but both sets of lyrics also take on similar subject matter – splitting day-to-day responsibilities fairly as a relationship reaches the next level.
On the writing credit for ‘Why Wouldn’t We’, Lefty is listed as a songwriter alongside Emily Weisband, Grady Block, and Steph Jones. For ‘I’ll Name The Dogs’, it is Matt Dragstrem, Ben Hayslip, and Josh Thompson who are credited.
Neither Lefty nor Shelton have addressed the comparisons publicly at time of writing.
Lefty has faced multiple accusations of plagiarism in the past too, with her hit song ‘Boston’ facing some backlash over its similarities to Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’. Lefty has always maintained that there was never her intention to have any similarities to the Kahan song, and Kahan was later given songwriting credit on the track due to the common ground.
“When I was writing this song, I wasn’t thinking about Noah Kahan. I was literally thinking about nothing at all,” she said at the time.
“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so I’m like, if this sounds like that, whatever, all good,” she said.
Another song to be suspected of plagiarism is another song from Lefty’s debut album called ‘Summer You Were Mine’.
That song has nods to The Chicks’ song ‘There’s Your Trouble’, and initially the songwriting credits did not feature original songwriters for the 1998 hit Tia Sillers and Mark Selby. Their names have since been added.
Since her debut album was released last month, Lefty has also announced an 18-date North American headline tour, which begins in Detroit on January 8 and runs until a Chicago date on February 20. Find any remaining tickets here.
