Joe Reeves on Producing Stella Lefty’s ‘Boston’: ‘It’s Capturing Lightning in a Bottle’
Categoria: Musica
Reeves talks about his career journey and working with artists including Juice WRLD, Stella Lefty and Morgan Wallen.
Por Billboard | 06/08/2026
Stella Lefty’s pop-country fusion hit “Boston” has become one of the biggest songs of the summer, joining tracks by Ella Langley, Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. The song has also reached the top five on Hot Country Songs, where female artists recently controlled every position in the top five for a seven-week stretch. That surge for “Boston” has also landed the song’s producer and co-writer, Joe Reeves, at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Producers chart . “I think it’s incredible how well women are doing in country right now,” Reeves tells Billboard . “I’m very grateful to be working with two talented women like Stella and [“Boston” co-writer] Grace [Enger], and all the female co-writers who I’ve been introduced to through this. And I love the way they are all bringing each other up. You see the community there and it feels strong.” Reeves met Lefty in 2025, as he was looking for a new musical project to work on. “She was doing kind of alternative music at the time, but that really caught my ear. I was like, ‘Damn, this girl’s got a really good voice.’ So me, her and Laura Veltz wrote this kind of dark indie-pop song [“The Kill”], which ended up being in Scream 7 , which is so random. LIke the next day, her publisher texted me saying it was being synched.” An early January 2026 session in Nashville would help spark “Boston,” which also interpolates Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.” Reeves ended up producing the song, and also co-writing it with Lefty, Enger and Jacob “J-Kash” Hindlin. “We were just coming up with little starts and different hooks. Then Stella started playing the chorus of ‘Boston,’ and both me and Grace were like, ‘There is definitely something to this,’” Reeves recalls. “We didn’t finish it that day and she kept posting [snippets of] the song on TikTok and then one day she was like, ‘We need to finish this.’ So she came to my studio in L.A.– it’s just this tiny, crammed space where I had squeezed a piano in the corner. I was thinking about selling that piano because I didn’t have the space, and luckily I didn’t, because it’s the one that ended up not only on ‘Boston,’ but also on the cover art. “That first verse came together so quickly,” he continues. “Obviously, Stella loves country music and she was like, ‘I want that kind of “put you in the world” storytelling. A lot of the writing process for us is so easy in terms of just vibe in the room. We don’t ever want there to be pressure.” Lefty’s commitment to producing an intimate, personal sound extended to the mic she used on “Boston.” “She loves this particular microphone, an SM7B and all the writers just use it in the room,” he explains. “I was like, ‘This isn’t the final vocal mic — I’ve got this expensive vocal mic that I invested in right here,’ and she was like, ‘No, I don’t want to use any of the fancy outboard gear. I just want to use this mic and sit on the couch and record it.’ And the s