In Sum 41's breakout single, "Fat Lip," the Canadian pop-punk band sing that they were raised on heavy-metal and mullets, and that "Maiden and Priest were the gods that we praised." Just a few months after it came out, the band were given the life-changing experience of playing a song with one of those very deities: Judas Priest singer Rob Halford.
Sum 41 were still the new kids on the block at this point, but in August 2001, MTV was throwing a special 20th anniversary show, and they had the young punks play a special medley that consisted of "Fat Lip," Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn," Mötley Crüe's "Shout at the Devil" and Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Comin.'"
That would've been an honor in and of itself, but Sum 41 were joined onstage by Crüe drummer Tommy Lee during the "No Sleep" and "Shout at the Devil" portion, and then Halford strutted out to belt the iconic Priest anthem while the rest of the crew served as his backing band.
After the performance, the host asked Halford how it felt to play with Sum 41, and the Metal God deemed them "the next great heavy-metal band of the future." Well, not quite, but the band did become exorbitantly popular shortly after that show, and years later, frontman Deryck Whibley remembered the performance as a defining moment of the band's career.
"We were fairly unknown at the time when we were asked to open the MTV 20th anniversary special," Whibley wrote in a 2021 social media post. "'Fat Lip' had been out for a few months and was doing decently well but we were still a new band to the public.
"We were asked originally to just perform 'Fat Lip,' but we had the idea — inspired by past MTV collaboration performances we'd seen — to reach out and ask if some of our favorite artists might do a cool medley with us."
Watch the whole shebang go down above via YouTube.
