Lennon Stella released her second studio album Sleeping Lion on Friday, October 23, 2026, through Records Label, LLC. The Lennon Stella new album ends a six year gap since her debut, and it does so by changing direction completely: out goes the polished pop of 2020, and in comes an intimate, folk inspired record produced on every track by Canadian artist Andy Shauf.
Stella, now 27, was born in Oshawa, Ontario. Her parents performed as the country duo The Stellas before relocating the family from small town Ontario to Nashville, where teenage Lennon and her younger sister Maisy went viral in 2012 with a homespun cover of Robyn’s Call Your Girlfriend and then starred for six seasons on the drama Nashville. Sleeping Lion is the sound of that long public childhood being answered by an adult writer entirely on her own terms.
Sleeping Lion Release Date, Label and Tracklist
Sleeping Lion runs 12 tracks in 36 minutes and 47 seconds. The full Sleeping Lion tracklist, with running times as listed by Qobuz, is Comedy Show at 3:00, Beginner’s Mind at 3:46, Porcelain at 3:01, Unforgivable Things at 2:35, I Still Want You at 3:26, Ta Da at 3:10, What’s There to Hold Onto at 2:59, Peach at 3:00, If She’ll Let Me at 3:28, Smartest Person in the Room at 3:22, Too Quiet, Too Loud at 3:25, and the closing Whatever That Means at just 1:35.
Two singles prepared the album, and both are older than this week and are framed that way here. Unforgivable Things arrived first in August 2026, released alongside an official video Stella co directed with Adam Alonzo, and Comedy Show followed in September as the second single before taking the album’s opening slot. The title itself comes from a tarot moment: Stella drew the Sleeping Lion card, and the name came to reflect the six year gap and an inner voice waking back up.
Scrapped, Then Rebuilt With Andy Shauf
The album that exists is not the album Stella first made. She scrapped an earlier version of the record entirely and re recorded it with Andy Shauf, the Saskatchewan indie artist known for Foxwarren, who produces and engineers every track here while playing bass, clarinet, pump organ, piano, drums, guitar, flute, vibraphone and Wurlitzer across the sessions. Simon Wilcox co writes throughout, Ethan Gruska co writes on four songs, Noah Georgeson mixed the record and Heba Kadry mastered it. Stella asked for a record made by real people playing together, with, in her words to Range Magazine, no computer at all.
Her explanation of the restart, given to Range, is the album’s thesis about trusting her own judgement:
On a spiritual level, it didn’t feel like I was fully going, ‘Here I am.’ There was also the technical side of it being really good and sounding great, but not having the heart that I was craving.
To Melodic Magazine she described the same decision at album scale, saying there were many little mountains throughout the experience that challenged her, lessons about truly trusting herself, and that she had to swallow her people pleasing tendencies and trust herself enough to scrap the first version without a plan, knowing the record she wanted was on the other side of that mountain. The influences she names match the result: overlooked folk visionaries Connie Converse and Nick Drake, Nick Drake’s mother Molly Drake, and Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal.
Twelve Songs, Written Plainly
The writing rewards the restart. Comedy Show opens the record as a breakup song written with unusual directness, and Stella has said the song names names, a first for a writer who used to leave everything open to interpretation. Unforgivable Things, the track she calls the door into the record, watches a partner sabotage a relationship in small ways instead of saying he wants out, over production that grows tenser as it goes. Beginner’s Mind yearns for the first phase of a relationship over a buoyant, piano flecked arrangement, and Ta Da turns performing for someone’s approval into a tap dance in sequined shoes for an audience that never looks up.
The second half goes quieter and deeper. What’s There to Hold Onto is a fragile, piano led centrepiece about losing yourself. If She’ll Let Me draws a careful portrait of the love that remained between her parents after their divorce. Smartest Person in the Room is the record’s release valve, a playful shot at a man explaining the world to hear himself talk, which Stella calls rolling her eyes in song and a necessary piece of the puzzle. Too Quiet, Too Loud takes on social anxiety and the weight of public perception after rapid teenage fame. The closer, Whatever That Means, has Stella and Shauf harmonising on a single affirmation about trusting herself even when others do not.
A Toronto Date Closes the First Run
Stella is presenting the album live in a short run of stripped down, sold out shows billed as Up Close and Personal: Nashville’s Blue Room on October 24, Le Poisson Rouge in New York on October 27, the Paradise Theatre in Toronto on October 29, and the Pico Union Project in Los Angeles on November 3. The Toronto date is the homecoming, an Oshawa born artist bringing her first full album performances to a hometown room. Her 2020 tour behind Three. Two. One. was cancelled by the pandemic, so playing a complete record live has been six years in the making, and she told Range the simple version of what she wants from it: after six years away, she just wants to be with people again.
Sleeping Lion will not be mistaken for a bid to reclaim a pop chart position. It is a smaller, braver record than that, twelve songs cut live with a close circle of Canadian collaborators, by a writer who threw away a finished album because it did not sound like herself. Six years is a long silence in pop. Stella used it to come back as a folk singer on her own terms, and the record justifies every month of the wait.
