Rock star eugenics

Nepo babies can be born as well as bred.

Tom Petty, who loved entertainment industry gambits such as getting out of an exploitative contract in the late 1970s by declaring bankruptcy, amused himself in his later years by suing people for plagiarizing his songs, such as winning an eighth of the rights to Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me”

because it repeated a few notes from Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

On the other hand, Petty passed up on suing the Red Hot Chili Peppers for stealing his riff from “Mary Jane’s Last Dance:”

for “Dani California:”

And Petty didn’t sue The Strokes for ripping off his 1976 classic “American Girl:”

For their 2001 hit “Last Nite:”

How come?