Is Peppers’ new song too Petty?

Are the Red Hot Chili Peppers dancing with Tom Petty’s girl? The New York Post, quoting an unnamed source, reported Thursday that Petty is “looking into legal ramifications” regarding similarities between his 1993 song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and the new Peppers hit, “Dani California.”

The Post points out similarities between the songs in chord progression, melody and theme, but the tabloid wasn’t the first to do so. A Delaware morning radio show host has made a mini-crusade out of the issue, and music fans have been hashing out the topic on the Internet for more than a week.

Petty’s publicist, Heidi Ellen Robinson Fitzgerald, told the Post: “I am well aware of this situation. [The songs] certainly do sound similar, don’t they? I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Tom doesn’t have a comment on this at all. I have no idea if he is going to sue the Chili Peppers, and am not prepared to make a comment on that.”

A spokeswoman at Warner Bros., the label for both Petty and the Peppers, told the Post the label had no knowledge of the matter. A spokeswoman for the Peppers could not be reached for comment on Thursday.