The songs Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty stole from each other
For aspiring songwriters, the music business tends to be like the Wild West. Anyone can spend their time trying to make the best music they can possibly come up with, but there are only so many times that someone can collaborate before someone else takes it all for themselves. And while Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty were certainly friendly with each other during their prime, they did have their fair share of tunes that they stole from each other as well.
Before Nicks had become a superstar, though, she was already transfixed by what Petty had been doing. Fleetwood Mac hadn’t been the most pleasant band to be in at the best of times, but by the time Nicks ended her work on Tusk, she admitted that she started to like Petty’s music better than what she was making.
So when she managed to get a foothold as a solo star, it was only natural for her to work with Petty, with the heartland rocker eventually gifting her ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’. When Nicks was preparing for her next album, Petty was starting to run out of steam when putting together what would become Southern Accents.
The Heartbreakers’ time off and overreliance on cocaine left him with hardly any ideas, but once Dave Stewart showed him a song called ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ that he was writing for Nicks, he managed to swipe it, with producer Jimmy Iovine remembering, “Stevie said, ‘I want Tom to write the lyrics. Tom then writes the lyrics and steals the song.” There are some pieces of the song that sound like Nicks, but only Petty could have pulled off that contrast between the verses and the choruses of the tune.
Two can play at that game, though, but when Nicks took a tune from Petty, it was purely by accident. When working on her album The Other Side of the Mirror, ‘Ooh My Love’ began with a piece that Petty had been working on with various synthesisers. Since the Heartbreakers had been known as a fairly raw band, Petty was furious when Nicks eventually turned it into a song since he had already used it for his track, ‘Runaway Trains’.
Then again, this is the one time where Petty may have been off the mark. The tune was bound to be a surefire hit no matter who sang it, but considering most of Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) was about the band getting back to their raw bar-band style roots, hearing a song that’s nothing but keyboards and Petty’s raw voice clashes with everything else on the record, almost like it was something he did for a film soundtrack that happened to get thrown onto the final mix.
Looking at both ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ and ‘Ooh My Love’ side by side, both of them at least have wisps of both Nicks and Petty in them. There’s still that earnestness in both of the lyrics, but each of them still has that slightly mystical quality, Petty’s especially since he brought out the whole Alice in Wonderland-style spectacle for the music video for ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’.
Despite having some cross-pollination between hits, this was never a case of anyone being malicious. If anything, the fact that both of them could write songs that could complement each other’s styles is further proof of how they were kindred musical spirits whenever they played together.
