“There’s a hundred songs that mention towns,” Mike Mullaney, assistant program director and music director at Audacy’s WBMX (Mix 104.1) Boston, tells Billboard. “But if you have a song which is great that mentions your town right away, it’s outstanding.”
Cue Stella Lefty’s “Boston.” (Literally, that’s what radio is doing.)
“This song is a legitimate hit. And that’s the takeaway,” Mullaney says.
On the Aug. 8-dated Billboard Hot 100, “Boston” spends a second week in the top five, a week after hitting a No. 3 best (and passing Dave Loggins’ 1974 ballad “Please Come to Boston” as the highest-charting song to shout out the city in a title). It drew 16.1 million streams, 28.6 million in radio reach (up 18% week over week) and 3,000 in sales (up 8%), according to data tracker Luminate.
The song’s radio sum is owed to play at both country and pop formats: It’s No. 7 on Country Airplay, No. 23 on Adult Pop Airplay and No. 27 on Pop Airplay, all new bests.
While the single, on Sandlot/Atlantic Outpost/Atlantic, is winning over fans nationally, and worldwide — it’s also up to No. 22 on the Billboard Global 200 and scaling Billboard Global Excl. U.S. — it has especially embedded itself in the hub of Boston radio.
How much? Here’s a look at the song’s airplay in the July 24-30 chart tracking week, according to Mediabase, in each of the top 10 Nielsen Audio radio markets — listed by best rank, among all songs, on down in each city:
Rank – Market (Plays)
- 1 – Boston (195)
- 6 – Houston (184)
- 24 – Dallas (95)
- 29 – Chicago (127)
- 29 – San Francisco (106)
- 37 – Philadelphia (54)
- 53 – Atlanta (87)
- 80 – Washington, D.C. (35)
- 206 – Los Angeles (34)
- n/a – New York (0)
(Hard to believe New Yorkers might not want to sing along to “Boston,” right?)
The leading 195 plays for “Boston” in Boston last week belonged to country stations WBWL (101.7 The Bull), with 70, and WKLB (Country 102.5), with 64, along with pop WXKS (Kiss 108), with 34, and adult pop Mix, with 27.
Mullaney paraphrases Dale Carnegie to explain part of the song’s allure in the market: “There’s no music as sweet as the sound of your own name.”
Aside from that easy in, Dylan Sprague, program director of iHeartMedia-owned The Bull and Kiss, agrees that the song’s strength is ultimately powering its play. “It certainly accelerated the familiarity, I think,” he tells Billboard, “But it’s such a big song, it’s hard to tell if it was the title or just the fact that it’s a great song.”
Two other factors stand out as key to the local success of “Boston,” per both programmers in the market: One, a word heard even before the title and, two, its ties to Noah Kahan, who shares songwriting credit on it, given its interpolation of his 2024 Hot 100 top 10, “Stick Season.”
Notably, Lefty starts the song with the line, “On a train back to Boston …” “Trains are a big part of our culture, whether it be the commuter rails coming into town, the subways … trains scream Boston,” Mullaney says. “So, automatically it hits you both ways. If you go to the Sox game, you’re on a train. If you go and see a concert, you’re on a train. So, Boston and trains really go nicely together.”
As for the Kahan connection, Sprague calls “Boston” “a great country song, but, you know, there’s a lot of people likening it to a great Noah Kahan folky song. Like, is it country or is it more in the Noah style? It’s just that kind of different blend of country for the Northeast.”
Kahan, at home primarily on adult alternative and pop radio, even draws airplay on country-formatted The Bull, where 2023’s “Dial Drunk” was among the station’s 40 most-played songs last week, despite never having appeared on Country Airplay. To date, the hit, which was reworked as a duet with Post Malone, has been played more than 1,100 times on the station.
Kahan, who in May earned his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200, The Great Divide, played Boston’s Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, July 7, 8, 10 and 11 — the only stretch of his ongoing The Great Divide Tour to feature a run of four dates at one venue in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Lefty — who’s from Chicago and based in Los Angeles — “got her start doing Noah Kahan covers,” Mullaney notes. “And I know, technically, he’s from Vermont, but he lives outside of Boston. So I mean, we kind of claim him as our guy.” He says “Boston,” thus, “works on every level. It feels like a local artist singing a local song.”
Plus, “It’s amazing that Noah Kahan is now getting musicians he inspired on the radio,” Mullaney marvels. “It’s like, didn’t he just show up two years ago?”
The song is also both benefiting from and adding to an especially country-soaked summer, with Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” atop the Hot 100 for a 16th week and the genre claiming the chart’s entire top five for the first time ever.
On Kiss, “We have not traditionally played the country crossover,” Sprague says of the heritage station, whose history includes long being a tastemaker for dance hits. “But this summer has been different, especially driven by ‘Choosin’ Texas,’ which is just such a gigantic anomaly.”
Stella Lefty performs at Billboard Country Live held at Category 10 on June 5, 2026, in Nashville.
Jamie Schramm/Billboard
“Boston” could be headed for even bigger things in the market. Says Tom Phillips, senior marketing director for 10K Projects, which operates under the Atlantic umbrella, “We have been intentional about leaning into the city’s connection to the song in our digital strategy. We’ve specifically targeted creators and fan communities centered around Boston itself, including Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots and broader Boston-focused content.”
Additionally, Lefty performed “Boston” in Boston while supporting boyfriend Vincent Mason on May 15 at Citizens House of Blues (on Lansdowne St., right behind Fenway Park). Phillips says that it made for “another authentic moment to connect the song with the city.”
And beyond, in Massachusetts and worldwide. From Salem to Scituate, Lexington to Revere, Beverley and Lynn to Marion and Sharon, “Boston” is, says Sprague, “a great song no matter what town you live in.”
