To those not paying close attention, Stella Lefty seems to have exploded out of nowhere over the last few months.
To Zach Horowitz, director of A&R and management at Disruptor Records, the latest success for the rising pop-country singer/songwriter has been years in the making.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that we’ve been building Stella’s fan base for years,” says Horowitz, who first met the Chicago native Lefty while he was still in college. After several years of playing support shows for other artists and building up a fan base the old fashioned way — brick by painstaking brick — Lefty tasted virality for the first time earlier this year, when her song “Thinking ‘Bout You” began taking off on social media. After teasing a snippet of an idea of a song on social media following that attention, and getting a big reaction from fans about it, that idea became “Boston,” which can now be considered her breakout single — as it reaches No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, her first time in the upper echelon of the major singles chart.
The success of “Boston” also helped lift her recent EP, Is This Heaven?, released via Atlantic Outpost, to a No. 9 debut on the Top Country Albums chart, making her the first woman this year to debut in the top 10. And that success helps Horowitz earn the title of Billboard‘s Executive of the Week.
Here, Horowitz talks about the long road to Stella’s current success, and how she remains connected to her fans more than ever. “You can’t predict or manufacture whether fans will actually care about an artist,” he says.
This week, Stella Lefty’s “Boston” reached No. 20 on the Hot 100, the first top 20 hit of her career. What key decision did you make to help make that happen?
Honestly, it comes down to one thing: trusting everyone on the team to not just do their job, but do it with conviction. Management at Disruptor, Atlantic Outpost, Livelihood, CAA — everyone has been locked in from day one. No ego, just a shared goal. That kind of alignment is genuinely rare and it’s been really special to be a part of.
How did you first come across Stella’s music and what made you want to work with her?
I found her online when I was still in college. We became friends first, but she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be an artist back then, so I was just giving her friendly advice. We stayed close and over time it became obvious she had something really special. She is a naturally gifted songwriter. She moved to L.A. and partnered with JKash for publishing who’s incredible and a dear friend of Adam [Alpert, CEO of Disruptor] so it all connected. At the end of the day, we all wanted to work with Stella because she’s a winner and she wants it just as badly as we do.
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Stella first went viral with “Thinking ’Bout You.” How did that build into the success you’ve had with “Boston”?
“Thinking ‘Bout You” is the moment where Stella’s authenticity really poked through. That record came from Stella being completely herself, and I think it gave her the confidence to block out the noise and really take ownership of her project. Not just the song, but the project as a whole. That mindset was everything when it came to “Boston.” My job is to support her and build the right infrastructure around her and she does the rest.
Her EP Is This Heaven? just debuted at No. 9 on the Country Albums chart, making her the first woman this year to debut in the top 10. How have you been able to pull in her fandom beyond just big singles, and into a project as a whole?
What a lot of people don’t realize is that we’ve been building Stella’s fan base for years. Support runs with Will Swinton, Alessi Rose, Jessie Murph, fan pop-ups in New York and L.A. We’ve always wanted to super-serve the people who were there from day one. Those fans became the foundation, and as the project has grown, it’s felt like a real community rather than just people streaming songs. That’s all Stella; she genuinely loves her fans and they know it.
She’s been working with a lot of different people lately, whether it’s collaborating on record with Vincent Mason on “Something to Lose” or popping up on stage at festivals with Wyatt Flores and Cameron Whitcomb. How much do collaborations and crossovers with other acts help a rising artist break through?
I’d love to take credit for the Vincent Mason record as some strategic play, but it wasn’t. They fell in love and wrote a song about it. It’s that simple. We obviously felt the business impact through fan crossover, but more than that, Vincent has been able to show Stella the ropes on a lot of the firsts she’s going through right now, which has been invaluable. Collaborations work best when you’re not thinking about them as positioning. Cameron and Wyatt are both genuine friends of Stella’s through the songwriter and artist community. Stagecoach felt natural because it was. It was just fun.
Lately, there has been a growing divide between artists who catch success online and those who can fill venues and sell tickets live. As she embarks on her next tours, how do you help connect both sides of her career in a way that can help her be more successful overall?
You can’t predict or manufacture whether fans will actually care about an artist. What we try to do is put Stella in a position to show fans that she genuinely cares about them. When that’s real, fans feel it and that’s what sells tickets. Her first tour this November is completely sold out and we have much more to come.
