I Won’t Back Down
Released April 1989
Format
7″ 12″ cassette CD
Recorded 1988
Genre Heartland rock
Length 2:59
Label MCA
Songwriter(s)
Tom Petty Jeff Lynne
Producer(s)
Jeff Lynne Tom Petty Mike Campbell
“I Won’t Back Down” is a song by American rock musician Tom Petty. It was released in April 1989 as the lead single from his first solo album, Full Moon Fever. The song was written by Petty and Jeff Lynne, his writing partner for the album. It 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.
Petty recalled the recording of this song to Mojo magazine: “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.”
A message of defiance against unnamed forces of difficulty and possibly oppression, the lyric is set against a mid-tempo beat:
Well I know what’s right, I got just one life
in a world that keeps on pushin’ me around
but I’ll stand my ground, and I won’t back down
Due to its themes, the song was played often on American radio following the September 11 attacks. Petty and the Heartbreakers played a quiet but resolute version of the song at the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon following the 2001 attacks.
In the 2007 documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream, Petty said that he felt some initial hesitation about releasing the song, given its clear and unabashed message.
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”. Petty clarified that he did not believe Smith plagiarized him, saying “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. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement”. Smith claimed he had never heard “I Won’t Back Down” before he wrote “Stay with Me”, but he acknowledged the similarity after listening to the song, and said that the likeness was “a complete coincidence”. 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 sampled or interpolated work.
Personnel
Tom Petty – lead and backing vocals, acoustic guitar
Mike Campbell – lead and slide guitar
George Harrison – acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Jeff Lynne – bass guitar, backing vocals
Howie Epstein – backing vocals
Phil Jones – drums, percussion