Thursday, July 16, 2026

Good News for Tom Petty’s Estate: Sam Smith’s Knock Off of “Won’t Back Down,” “Stay with Me,” Has Sold 10 Million Copies

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Tom Petty must be smiling in heaven.

Sam Smith’s 2014 knock off of Petty’s 1989 hit “I Won’t Back Down,” called “Stay with Me,” has crossed the 10 million mark in sales.

This was Smith’s first hit. It was being played everywhere until someone realized it sounded exactly like “Won’t Back Down.” Petty and his co-writer Jeff Lynne were added immediately to the credits. Petty and Lynne split 25% of the song’s royalties in a case reportedly settled out of court.

Smith is not a very original songwriter. He has hits called “I’m Not the Only One” (hello Melissa Etheridge), “Too Good at Goodbyes” (which connotes Julian Lennon’s “Too Late for Goodbyes”), plus “How Do You Sleep?” (John Lennon), and so on.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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