Sam Smith’s Stay With Me has won record of the year at the 2015 Grammy Awards. The UK pop singer triumphed over competition from Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass, Sia’s Chandelier and Iggy Azelea’s Fancy, which featured Charli XCX.
The triumph caps a stellar 12 months for 22-year-old Smith, whose career was kickstarted when he won the critics’ choice award at the Brit awards in 2014. Since then his debut album, In the Lonely Hour, has become a worldwide hit. The single Stay With Me has not been without controversy, however – in January it was reported that Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne had been awarded songwriting credits owing to similarities to Petty’s 1989 hit I Won’t Back Down. As a result, the song is credited not just to Smith and his co-writers James Napier and William Phillips but also Petty and Lynne.
The Grammy is not going to the original recording of Stay With Me but the Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins version that was released later, although it contains only minor alterations.
