Don’t be another casualty of society, read the story behind Sum 41's pop-punk megahit “Fat Lip”

There are few earworms more enjoyable than the 2001 pop-punk staple “Fat Lip.” Appearing in movies, video games, mainstream radio, and karaoke rooms across the globe, the song was Sum 41's breakout hit, a piece of punk candy to fill out satiate suburban teens between the release of Blink-182's Enema of the State and Green Day’s American Idiot. But the confection didn’t melt like a bowl of Häagen-Dazs; it was preserved in a vacuum seal of nostalgia like a package of space ice cream.

Two decades after the song’s release, Stereogum writer Brendan Menapace spoke with lead singer Derek Whibley to get the story behind the El Camino, that infectious rapping, and how fellow early-’00s pop-punkers were the first to see the music video. In addition to chronicling the band’s rocket to success—which began with a humble deal with their parents (they essentially had two years to make the band work lest they be forced to *gasp* go to college)—the piece also looks at their post-“Fat Lip” music videos, in which the band and Will Sasso took potshots at the Strokes. Everything they discuss is a goldmine for pop-punk historians, including a medley with Tommy Lee and Rob Halford and a mind-boggling track for the Spider-Man soundtrack that features Slayer’s Kerry King failing to give the song the legitimacy it needed.