P!nk Covers Sam Smith’s Stay With Me During Heart-Gripping Live Performance

Mar 19, 2020 by apost team

Accompanied by backup singers and a live band, award-winning pop star P!nk covered Sam Smith’s gospel-inspired hit single Stay With Me in a 2017 live segment of BBC Radio’s the Live Lounge, showing off her vocal talent. Beyond its many covers, the Sam Smith song has an interesting backstory.

In P!nk’s exclusive appearance on BBC’s the Live Lounge, which hosts well-known performers who sing one song of their own in addition to one cover, the grammy-award winning singer began with her 2017 single What About Us before ending with her rendition of Stay With Me according to BBC Radio 1. But P!nk was not the first well-known singer to cover Smith’s award-winning track, which has generated a lot of media coverage since Smith wrote it in 2014.

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In a 2014 episode of the Live Lounge, Ed Sheeran also played his interpretation of the soulful ballad, calling it his “favorite song of the last year” according to MTV News.

He gave the song and the English songwriter high praise, adding that, “I think it’s an instant classic. It’s gonna be around for a long time. [Sam Smith] is gonna be around for a long time, as well.” And with P!nk’s rendition three years later, it seems like Sheeran was right. The song was, and continues to be, a hit.

Stay With Me, which chronicles the singer’s conflicted feelings about love, was one of Smith’s break out successes in 2014, selling nearly four million copies worldwide and earning multiple nominations including Best Pop Performance at the 2015 Grammy Awards according to NME. After such a grand success and covers from superstars like P!nk and Sheeran, it's clear that the song spoke to a large audience.

In the ballad, Smith sings: “Oh, won't you stay with me? / 'Cause you're all I need / This ain't love, it's clear to see / But darling, stay with me.” But the song, which admittedly has its fair share of fans, isn't without its controversies either.

A year after the song’s release in 2015, The Sun reported that Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty settled out of court with Smith, agreeing that Lynne and Petty would both receive 12.5 percent writing credit for the song over accusations that the song resembled Petty’s 1989 I Won’t Back Down. Given that Smith’s song was so successful, it’s likely that 12.5 percent of the royalties amounts to a hefty sum of cash for Petty and Lynne.

But despite the legal battle, Petty wrote a friendly note on his website according to The Sun, explaining that Smith and his team “were very understanding of our predicament,” and that he didn’t know who leaked the out-of-court deal to the press.

“Let me say I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam,” Petty wrote. “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by.”

But despite the Smith and Petty’s amicable arrangement, shortly thereafter The Sun reported that another songwriter, Mark Halper, also filed a lawsuit against the grammy-award winning artist, claiming that Stay With Me resembles 1986 demo he recorded called Don’t Throw Our Love Away.

But regardless of whether Smith was maybe a bit too inspired from other artists, the song has an interesting backstory that has touched a lot of different singers in the music industry. From P!nk to Ed Sheeran, music greats from across genres have showcased their interpretations of the extremely popular, controversial single.

What do you think about Sam Smith’s Stay With Me? Let us know your thoughts, and be sure to pass this article on to all the P!nk and Sam Smith fans you know.