Last year, Sam Smith did a 24-show residency at Brooklyn's small Warsaw. The singer used the opportunity to cover Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers' 1987 song "It Will All Work Out" and discuss their copyright dispute with the classic rock icon, revealing that Petty had written them a letter at the time. Smith elaborated on the story in a recent episode of Alchemy With Anthony Mason.
It was over a decade ago that Petty and singer/composer Jeff Lynne were awarded a 12.5% writing credit for Sam Smith's breakthrough hit "Stay With Me." At the time, Petty said he "never had any hard feelings toward Sam." In the new interview, Smith says, "You've got to understand, 'Stay With Me' was written in a basement in London and I'd never ever heard 'I Won't Back Down.' Regretfully, actually. I, as a young kid, just didn't listen to men, if I'm honest. The only male singers I ever listened to were Stevie Wonder and George Michael. I was a kid that just loved the divas. And girl pop. So I'd never heard it."
They said Petty "wrote me a letter just before the Grammys that I won. I won four Grammys for In The Lonely Hour. He wrote me a letter the night before the Grammys and it arrived to my room. I was so pissed off when I read it." They mentioned that there have been lawsuits since, including the ongoing battle over their 2019 Normani duet "Dancing With A Stranger."
"It's heartbreaking when it happens actually," they continued. "Not because I think the idea is so originally mine, because music is this big thing of inspiration and you can hear something anywhere and be inspired. But if we start playing this game, we're gonna have to analyze everything. He said it himself in the letter to me that there's only so many notes on the piano. And that's why I was annoyed because when he said that, I was like, 'You get it, so why is this happening?'"
"But now as I'm older I understand why, I understand that it wasn't just him," they said. "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 that this is all happening. Which was actually very, very sweet and kind of him. I'm so deeply regretful that I never responded to him. I never wrote back to him. I was just a little sassy 22-year-old queer kid. But I definitely should've written back to him."
Watch the interview below, with the Tom Petty talk beginning 37 minutes in.
