British singer Sam Smith has revealed in a recent interview his regret for not having responded to a letter that songwriter Tom Petty sent him during the dispute over the songwriting credits of the song Stay with me, his big hit that had similarities in the chorus with I won’t back down, by the American artist.
The singer reflected on the controversy during a recent appearance on the Alchemy With Anthony Mason show, revealing that she had never heard Petty’s song before, let alone before writing her famous 2014 single.
Petty and Jeff Lynne joined as co-writers of Stay with me in 2015, after the publishers of the 1989 track contacted Smith’s team due to the strong resemblance between the choruses of the songs.
At that time, Smith’s representatives described the similarity as “pure coincidence,” and the parties eventually reached an amicable agreement, without legal proceedings.
“You have to understand that Stay with me was written in a basement in London and I had never heard I won’t back down,” Smith said in the recent conversation.
“The truth is that, unfortunately, as a child I didn’t listen to men. The only male singers I listened to were Stevie Wonder and George Michael. As a child I loved divas and female pop. So I had never heard it,” she also stated.
Smith also revealed that Petty wrote to her shortly before the 2015 Grammy Awards, where she won four awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for Stay with me itself.
“He wrote me a letter the night before the Grammys and it arrived in my room,” she recalled. “I was very angry when I read it,” she added.
Petty wrote in the letter that there was similarity between both songs due to “the limited number of notes on the piano.” Smith commented at the time: “why is this happening?”.
“Now that I’m older I understand why, I understand it wasn’t just him,” Smith continued. “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 all this is happening.”
“It was a very, very sweet and kind gesture on his part. I deeply regret not having replied to him. I never answered him. I was just a cheeky 22-year-old queer girl. But I definitely should have answered him.”
After the news of the agreement became known in 2015, Petty issued a statement insisting that he held “no resentment” towards Smith and considered the similarity only a “musical accident.”
“All my years of songwriting have shown me that these things can happen,” he wrote. “Sam’s people fully understood our situation and we reached an agreement easily. The word lawsuit was not even mentioned, and it was never my intention.”
Petty died in October 2017 at the age of 66, in a surprising news that shocked the world.
