Sam Smith has said that they regret not getting back to Tom Petty after the Heartbreakers singer wrote to them, pointing out the alleged similarities between Smith’s 2014 hit Stay With Me and I Won’t Back Down.
Smith and his co-writers James Napier and William Phillips ended up having to give a 12.5% cut of the royalties to Petty and co-writer Jeff Lynne, due to a three-note figure in the song that was a mite too close to the one in Petty’s 1989 hit. A decade down the line, Smith admitted during an appearance on the Alchemy With Anthony Mason podcast that they have regrets about what happened.
The singer still maintains that they had never even heard I Won’t Back Down before writing Stay With Me. “Regretfully, actually, I, as a young kid, just didn’t listen to men, if I’m honest. The only male singers I ever listened to were Stevie Wonder and George Michael. I was a kid that just loved the divas. And girl pop. So I’d never heard it.”
Stay With Me won Grammys for Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year at the 2015 awards and the night before the ceremony Smith received a letter from Petty, which at the time left him peeved. "I was so pissed off when I read it, that's the truth… We're talking about three notes. When it all kicked off it was my first album, my first chance of success, or changing my life, of being able to finally achieve my dreams and do what I wanted to do. And then when I heard what was happening I was like, 'That's crazy, that's awful that that can happen.'”
They continued: "He said it himself in the letter to me – that there are only so many notes on the piano – and that's why I was annoyed. Because when he said that I was like, ‘You get it, so why is this happening?’ Now as I’m older I understand why, I understand that it wasn’t just him".
Asked what they think Petty was trying to say in his letter, Smith replied: “I think he was trying to say that I see you and I understand what you’re going through right now and I’m sorry that this is all happening. Which was actually very, very sweet and kind of him. I’m so deeply regretful that I never responded to him. I never wrote back to him. I was just a little sassy 22-year-old queer kid. But I definitely should’ve written back to him."
Petty died in 2017, aged just 66, so Smith never got the opportunity to straighten things out with him, but the singer says that since then they’ve opened up to the lead Heartbreaker’s oeuvre.
“Since that happening, I have listened to his music. There's a song called It Will All Work Out, which just moves me, and has become a song I turn to in my darkest moments."
