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.”

There are hundreds if not thousands of tributes to Dolly Parton all over the media since she passed away on Tuesday.

Plenty of recording artists have shared memories of working with Dolly over the years, no matter how minor the connection.

But one voice has not been heard from: famed producer David Foster.

Foster is usually the first to be interviewed when someone he knew well goes to the great beyond. In this case, the relationship goes back to the 1980s. He may be too upset to talk about it yet.

Foster co-producer Dolly’s Christmas album with Kenny Rogers back in 1984. He produced and playde on her cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in 2005. Just this year, he was part of a charity single recording of her song “Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”

But their most important connection came when Foster produced Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” The song made millions for Dolly (which she naturally gave to charity) and turned the song into an all time classic hit played endlessly everywhere. Foster has told stories about how the hit came about for years, including his reluctance to being the record with Whitney singing a capella. But Clive Davis convinced him that was the way to go, and the rest is history.

Foster is the subject of a documentary by Barry Avrich premiering at the Toronto Film Festival next week. Two weeks ago he and his wife family hosted the 40th anniversary of the David Foster Foundation up in Canada. He was last photographed in West Hollywood on August 20th outside Craig’s restaurant, five days before Dolly’s passing.

This is just the beginning.

Dolly Parton’s death was announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Within 48 hours, “Ultimate Dolly Parton” sold 73,000 streaming equivalent copies. The album finished the week at number 2, with only two days of sales.

Extraordinary.

Dolly’s albums and singles are literally all over iTunes and amazon. On Spotify, where her streaming numbers soared, “Jolene,” “9to5,” “Islands in the Stream,” and “I Will Always Love You” are in the top 20.

The beloved singer has eight of the top 10 singles on iTunes. She has top 3 albums, with “Ultimate” leading the way. Her singles are also dominating the iTunes country singles chart.

Again, this surge has only just begun. It’s going to go on for a while, displacing many current hits on the charts.

And we still don’t know about unreleased material, and there’s plenty!