Singer Sam Smith burst onto the scene in 2014 with a hit called “Stay with Me.”
Not too long after, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne recognized that Smith had lifted the chorus from their Petty hit, “I Won’t Back Down.”
Smith said at the same he’d never heard of Tom Petty (lol) or the song.
A court ordered him to give the songwriting duo 12.5% of the proceeds, forever.
Now the great Anthony Mason of CBS and his podcast Alchemy brings up the subject in a new interview.
Smith still denies knowing Petty’s music. “The only male singers I ever listened to was Stevie Wonder and George Michael.”
But they (their pronoun choice) conceded that wasn’t the last time he’s had a problem with their (singular) songs.
Smith tells Mason, “I mean, I’ve now had it happen a few times and and still battling something right now.”
Smith won four Grammys for the song and the album it was on. Smith says the night before the Grammys, Petty sent him a letter, but he never responded to it.
“He wrote me a letter the night before the Grammys and it arrived in my room and I was so pissed off when I read it,” Smith tells Mason. “I never wrote back to him. I was just a little sassy.
Now that the rocker is dead, Smith says, “I love Tom Petty’s music and um I’m very inspired by it now.”
