Deryck Whibley Wrote One Of Sum 41's Most Iconic Singles Almost By Accident

Sum 41 Backstage in Las Vegas

Photo: Getty Images North America

"Still Waiting" is one of Sum 41's most iconic singles and is the first glimpse into the more serious subject matter that makes up their sophomore album Does This Look Infected? And it almost never existed.

The band sat down with AltPress to tell the single's story for the publication's "The Anthem" series, and Deryck Whibley revealed that he actually came up with the song after they'd already begun recording the album.

The record [Does This Look Infected?] was pretty much written," the frontman recalled. "We were already in the studio making it, and for some reason, this little idea came into my head when I wasn’t even trying to write songs anymore. I thought I was done. I woke up with this chorus in my head. I went and sang it and all of a sudden had a riff right away, which became the verse riff. I knew I wanted it to have screamy, shouty verses. I’m screaming as hard as I can in those verses. It’s one of those songs that came out exactly the way I heard it in my head."

When he took the demo to his bandmates, they instantly knew it had to be the album's lead single, which added even more pressure to Whibley. "There was just so much pressure in those days, from myself, from the label, from everybody involved, because we were following up a record that had sold a few million [copies]. [We] had to deliver to prove that [we] weren’t this one-album band," he explained. "Right away, everyone agreed that the song, even though all I had was a verse and a chorus, was probably going to be the first single. You could tell that there was something special about it, that it was better than everything else on the record. In the first week of recording in New York City, I stayed back at the hotel every day trying to finish this song. Everybody was asking me, 'Is it finished yet?' I stayed in the hotel for a week till it was done. In retrospect, it was quick, but it felt like it was taking a year because everybody was hounding me for it."


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