Lennon Stella

Sleeping Lion is Lennon Stella’s second record, but it feels like an introduction. The title’s image of dormant strength aptly summarizes the journey that the 27 year old indie folk singer-songwriter has been on for six years. “There were glimpses of me before, but not without compromise,” Stella says. “This record is a return to myself in many ways.”

Born in rural Ontario to a family of self-taught musicians, Lennon picked up her first guitar at age five and began writing songs almost immediately, later adding piano to her repertoire. With her parents performing as the country duo The Stellas, she was immersed in music and naturally gravitated toward making it with her younger sister, Maisy. After her family moved to Nashville, she and Maisy began performing together, first alongside their parents, and later as Lennon & Maisy. The pair, just 12 and 8 at the time, soon found a huge audience via YouTube for their impressive viral covers while also earning widespread recognition as stars of ABC’s beloved music drama Nashville. Across six seasons, they performed songs from the series alongside popular covers. The show concluded in 2018 and, at 18 years old, Lennon turned her focus to her solo career with the release of her debut EP, Love, me.

In 2020, Stella released her debut album, a pop collection titled Three. Two. One. After the fact, she felt as if her artistic vision was still waiting to fully flourish. **“**Because I had been in the industry since I was 12, it’s really all I knew. It all felt so serious, stakes always so high. There was a period where I was prematurely exposed to too many voices and opinions, and as it goes, I got lost.”

At what many would consider a crucial point in any artist’s career – Stella retreated to a house an hour outside of Nashville, surrounded by farmland and goats. After working nonstop since childhood, she needed to take a second to get to know herself, live her life, and reevaluate her priorities. “It took getting quiet enough to be able to hear the pang and know what I really wanted.” For Lennon, that moment of quiet lasted six years.

She never stopped writing songs, never rushed anything, while trusting herself, and taking her time. “I waited long enough that people within the industry stopped caring, and the pressure went away,” Stella says. “With that came freedom, inspiration, and excitement; My true love of music returned.”

She completed an early version of Sleeping Lion, but something felt off at the end of the process. **“**It felt like there were many little mountains throughout the experience of making this album that challenged me, lessons I learned about truly trusting myself,” Stella says. “I had to swallow any people-pleasing tendencies, piss everyone off, and trust myself enough to scrap it without a plan. I knew that this was one of the little mountains, and the record I wanted to make was on the other side of it.”

The next part of the story feels cosmic, as if the universe sensed that Stella was at a crossroads and offered her a lodestar in the form of Andy Shauf. The singer-songwriter, whose albums The Bearer of Bad News (2012) and The Party (2016) are among Stella’s all-time favorites, was looking to produce for other artists. It was kismet. “It was a very spiritual thing for him to be the

person who came through the clouds parting,” she says. “It felt like a return on so many levels, it’s very full circle.” Making this record was about going back to what initially moved her, before other things got in the way. “The Party was an album that broke me open at 17 and inspired me

deeply. With my intention being to return to that initial spark, he was a direct line to the music I have consistently listened to since I was kid. Music that feels earnest and pure, preserved and untouched by the industry – that has always been what moves my needle.” These influences played a big part in the sonic shift of this album which will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed and seen her online covers through the past years of songs by the likes of Nick Drake, Molly Drake, Connie Converse, and Daniel Johnston.

After an initial session at Shauf’s Toronto studio in the winter of 2025, Stella returned that summer. “I remember [Shauf] saying ‘I can’t hear your voice”’ when he listened to the old recordings,” she says. “We focused on recentering and capturing a sound that felt very alive.” Stella was able to channel all the time and energy she had spent getting to know herself better into the intimate process. “Over the course of the six years it took to make this record,” she says, “I slowly gained the confidence to take up space. I mean it with every fiber that the gift of this record has already been given.”

The songs on Sleeping Lion revolve around the intricacies of relationships, and Stella is an acute observer. Some songs explore the vulnerabilities of a long-term partnership, like “Beginner’s Mind,” which is about “remembering what it was like before you knew every crevice of a person,” she says. “If She’ll Let Me” enlarges a snapshot of a memory into a meditation on devotion and endurance. Even the condescending subject of the upbeat “Smartest Person in the Room” is sketched with a compassionate sarcasm, even if he does “put the dick in diction.”

On this set of songs, Stella challenged herself to write with as much honesty as possible. She recalls how her longtime co-writer, Simon Wilcox, encouraged her to write without a filter and worry later about reactions from the song’s subjects. “It was always a push for me to write freely, to put aside the part of myself that wants to make sure that everyone’s going to be okay, and that’s afraid of hurting people,” Stella says. She wrote the album’s opener, “Comedy Show” “with total freedom, thinking that nobody was going to hear it because it’s so specific and personal.” “Tell me what is there to laugh about/Are you seriously stoned right now?,” she sings. “I’m crying quietly in Kathy’s house/And you’re going out.” Similarly, “Unforgivable Things” aches with disappointment as Stella recognizes the disconnect between someone’s intentions and their actions.

Ultimately, Sleeping Lion captures an awakening as Stella embraces her own agency and explores her own insecurities with empathy and curiosity. The album’s centerpiece is “What’s There To Hold On To,” a piano ballad about losing oneself. If she’s speaking from experience, she’s emerged on the other side with the self-awareness to buoy herself. Sleeping Lion ends with a brief incantation, “Whatever That Means.” “May I trust myself even when you don’t trust me,” Stella and Shauf harmonize over a barely there guitar. “Even when you think the worst of me.” It’s a reminder that it’s always possible to regroup and to do whatever it takes to awaken the sleeping lion within.