Sam Smith Admits 'Stay With Me' Sounds Like This Song; To Pay Royalties for Resemblance

Members of earlier generations may have thought Sam Smith's hit "Stay With Me" sounded familiar. Even the writers of the song have agreed the Grammy-nominated single sounds like Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" when the original songwriters called them out over the similarity.

"Although the likeness was a complete coincidence, all involved came to an immediate and amicable agreement in which Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne are now credited as co-writers of 'Stay With Me' along with Sam Smith, James Napier and William Phillips," a representative revealed to The Independent.

Sam himself has said, through his spokesperson, that he isn't familiar with the song, which was released 3 years before he was born.

According to the statement released by the British crooner's rep, it was the writers of "I Won't Back Down who reached out to Sam and co. to point out the "similarities heard in the melodies of the choruses of the two compositions," USA Today reported.

"On the ASCAP site, where songwriter information is collated and frequently updated, Petty and Lynne are now listed among the 'Stay With Me' team of Smith, Napier and Phillips," Rolling Stone observed. "It's unclear whether Petty and Lynne were retroactively compensated for their songwriting credit or if they'll receive future earnings on the track."

Although reported just recently, the said settlement was actually made in October last year, "with Petty and Lynne splitting a 25% share of songwriting royalties of Smith's song," USA Today said.

Young listeners may find this development puzzling, but other audiences have already observed the similarities between the two tracks not long after "Stay With Me" was released. One of them in professional musicologist Michael Harrington, who also teaches at Berklee College of Music and Harvard Law School.

"If you took just the first phrase of the Tom Petty and Sam Smith and compared them, I would say, 'So what? I can find that in all sorts of music from Cream, Robert Johnson, Debussy,'" he said. "The fact that it keeps going and going: there are several phrases, and the rhythms are the same or extremely close to being the same. At some point, the similarity goes on too long."

This was apparently the case as it did not take long for the "Stay With Me" hitmakers to acknowledge the observations.

With this turn of event, it appears Sam is in for a challenging year. He was recently the target of Howard Stern's controversial statements during the weekend, calling the singer "ugly" and "fat," MailOnline noted. He also declared that Sam is just a one hit wonder, prompting Sam to express his amazement at the radio personality's critical remarks. However, he had chosen to pay no further attention to the comments, tweeting "Ignore."

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