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I Won't Back Down (WORD) (coming soon)
I Won't Back Down (PDF) (coming soon)
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"I Won't Back Down" reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Album Rock Tracks chart for five weeks, starting the album's road to multi-platinum status. One of the reasons the song was so successful and so well-reviewed is because it’s an anthem for standing up for what you believe. Yet, Petty doesn’t much name who the adversary is, for him. As a result, the song stands in as something anyone can play, sing or listen to when needing to stand up to someone in their own life.
Petty has said the following about the recording of the song: "At the session George Harrison sang and played the guitar. I had a terrible cold that day, and George went to the store and bought a ginger root, boiled it and had me stick my head in the pot to get the ginger steam to open up my sinuses, and then I ran in and did the take." Mike Campbell, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne also appear in the music video for "I Won't Back Down" with Harrison's former Beatles bandmate, Ringo Starr, playing drums; however, Starr did not play on the recording.
In January 2015, it was revealed that an agreement had been reached whereby Petty and Jeff Lynne would be credited as co-writers of Sam Smith's song "Stay with Me" and receive 12.5% of its royalties. Petty's publishing company had contacted Smith's publisher after noticing a likeness between "Stay with Me" and "I Won't Back Down". Smith claimed not to have heard "I Won't Back Down" before writing "Stay with Me",[10] but acknowledged the similarity after listening to the song, calling it "a complete coincidence".[11][12] Petty and Lynne were not eligible for a Grammy Award ("Stay with Me" was nominated for three awards at the 57th annual ceremony, winning two of them) as the Recording Academy considered "Stay with Me" to have been interpolated from "I Won't Back Down" by Smith, James Napier, and William Phillips, the writers of "Stay with Me"; Petty and Lynne were instead given certificates to honor their participation in the work, as is usual for writers of work which is sampled or interpolated by others.