Fat Lip

"Fat Lip" is a song by Canadian rock band Sum 41. It is the fourth track on their debut album, All Killer No Filler (2001), and was released as the lead single in April 2001. It is the band's most successful single to date, topping the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It peaked at number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and at number eight on the UK Singles Chart. Background and composition "Fat Lip" was written by Sum 41 members Deryck Whibley, Steve Jocz and Dave Brownsound, and in-house producer Greig Nori, with production by Jerry Finn. The song gets its title from the slang term for a swollen lip as a result of being punched in the face. "It was the last song I had written for All Killer [No Filler]," Whibley told Stereogum in 2021. "The whole album was pretty much done. It was never meant to be a single. It wasn't even supposed to be a song. The very, very first thing I wrote was the guitar riff. And I didn't necessarily write it for this idea that I had for this sort of punk rock-rap kind of thing. I knew I had this old school rap idea mixed with punk rock sort of stuff, but I wrote this riff just as a riff. And then I ended up writing a chorus, like, months later. And then I had this verse. And none of them were supposed to be together. They were just separate things that I was writing over time. And then one day it kind of clicked, and I thought, 'Well, these all kind of work. They're all around the same tempo, they're all the same key.' I changed a few things and made it work, now all of a sudden I was like, 'OK, I've got the rap part, I've got a riff, and I've got a chorus.' But I don’t have the rest of the song. And then it took a long time before pieces just kind of came together." The uptempo song has been described as pop punk, skate punk, rap rock, and easycore, with Whibley, Brownsound, and Jocz sharing vocal duties. "The verses are really about what we do: growing up in the suburbs, going to parties and hanging out with our friends, and causing trouble. A lot of people say they relate to it," said Whibley. Brian Hiatt of MTV.com described the song as "pop-punk-meets-hip-hop", Loudwire cited it as a containing elements of hard rock and PopMatters cited it as using elements of heavy metal. The song has also been described to be "Mixing elements of skate punk, nu-metal, and good old-fashioned pop"