Stella Lefty, whose breakthrough hit “Boston” is No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for a second consecutive week, has left Disruptor Management, according to sources.
Disruptor helped guide Lefty’s ascent from unknown artist to one of 2026’s biggest breakthroughs and one of the year’s most successful acts. With the two-week No. 1 status of “Boston,” Lefty became the first solo-billed woman to have a debut single spend multiple weeks at No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart since Gretchen Wilson, whose “Redneck Woman” spent five weeks at No. 1 in 2004. The song also peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Long Way Home, Lefty’s debut album, reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200. She will also embark on a sold-out tour in November.
Disruptor director of A&R and management Zach Horowitz, who had managed Lefty with Disruptor CEO Adam Alpert, told Billboard in June that he found Lefty online while he was still in college a number of years ago and she was a burgeoning singer-songwriter from Chicago.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that we’ve been building Stella’s fan base for years. Support runs with [several acts], fan pop-ups in New York and L.A.,” Horowitz told Billboard. “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.”
Lefty also made a recent change with her press representation, switching from Align to Nashville-based Sweet Talk PR.
Lefty’s tremendous success has come with a vicious backlash. As the daughter of billionaire Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky, she was labeled a “nepo baby.” Online critics have questioned her country authenticity since she is from Chicago. She also has been criticized for her songs sounding too similar to other artists, though she has credited songwriters like Noah Kahan, who received a songwriting credit on “Boston” as the song interpolates “Stick Season,” while writers Tia Sillers and Mark Selby are credited on “Summer You Were Mine” for the song’s similarity to The Chicks’ 1998 hit “There’s Your Trouble.”
Despite her online detractors, Lefty has plenty of supporters within the country music industry, including country superstar Randy Travis. After she posted a video on Sept. 22 singing an unreleased song that references country influences, including Travis, the country legend posted an encouraging message on her TikTok: “Thank you for the nod, Stella! I’ve always thought you could stand toe to toe with the very best in Nashville. Keep believing … face to the sunshine and shadows fall behind you!”
Kelsea Ballerini also showed support for Lefty after the singer made her Grand Ole Opry debut and shared a post backstage with two young St. Jude cancer patients that, incredulously, drew criticism. “Opry member chiming in!!… From different backgrounds and hometowns and generations, we can find ways to say and sing things that resonate with people that fill the seats… and that is always the goal, right?… [The Opry is] about celebration of all kinds of country music,” Ballerini wrote. “New, old, traditional, current, however you wanna say it. It’s all important.”
In August, Lefty told Billboard she was grateful to have been accepted by the country music community. “It’s so crazy to be so embraced in a genre that I’ve always loved,” she said. “Country music has been such a huge part of my life. And I feel like it’s always scary when you start making music that kind of bleeds into a genre. Country is so specific about who they embrace and how they go about things, so to be accepted in that world is truly the greatest honor.”
Disruptor, which also has a joint label venture through Sony, continues to represent a full slate of artists on both the management and label side.
Reps for Disruptor and Lefty, as well as her attorney and her label Atlantic Outpost, either did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment.
