Sam Smith has returned to the songwriting credit dispute over "Stay With Me," saying on the interview series Alchemy With Anthony Mason that they never answered a letter Tom Petty sent at the time and regret it.
The facts of the dispute are settled. Petty and Jeff Lynne were added as co-writers of the 2014 single in 2015, after the publishers of their 1989 song "I Won't Back Down" contacted Smith's team about similarities between the choruses. Smith's representatives called the resemblance a complete coincidence, and the parties reached an agreement without litigation.
Smith still maintains they had not heard the Petty song. "Stay With Me" was written in a basement in London, they said, and as a young listener they did not listen to men at all, naming Stevie Wonder and George Michael as the only male singers they went to and describing themselves as a kid who loved the divas and girl pop.
The letter arrived the night before the 2015 Grammy Awards, where Smith won four prizes including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for the song. "I was so pissed off when I read it," they recalled, remembering Petty writing that there are only so many notes on the piano.
The reading has changed with age. Smith now takes the letter as Petty saying he understood what they were going through and was sorry it was happening, and calls it kind. They describe themselves back then as a "sassy 22-year-old queer kid" who should have written back.
Petty said publicly at the time that he held no hard feelings and considered the overlap a musical accident, writing that the word lawsuit was never even said. He died in October 2017 at 66. Smith covered Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "It Will All Work Out" during a 24-show residency at Brooklyn's Warsaw last year, and released their fifth album this month. Both sit in a pop and rock year MusicSuey has followed through the album Hazel Eyes and the single When He's Gone.
The facts
- Petty and Jeff Lynne were added as Stay With Me co-writers in 2015
- Smith says they had never heard I Won't Back Down
- Petty's letter arrived the night before the 2015 Grammys
- Smith won four Grammys that night, including Record of the Year
- Petty called the similarity a musical accident
- Tom Petty died in October 2017 at 66
How this checks out
Developing
Reported by 2 independent outlets
A few outlets have it so far, short of the bar we set for confirmed.
Cited sources 2
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.