In Too Deep
by Sum 41
- 117
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Deryck Whibley was 18 and waiting by the window for a friend to pick him up for a trip into downtown Toronto. The friend was very late. Whibley picked up his guitar and started playing around. The riff came first. Within three or four minutes he had improvised the verses and chorus of "In Too Deep", everything except the solo and bridge, He put it on a small recorder without thinking much of it. A few months later he finished the song.
The words came from a bad relationship in the 10th grade that had made him swear off girlfriends. Sum 41 later recorded it for All Killer No Filler, where it is the seventh track. It came out as the second single in September 2001. Before any of that, it had been something else. According to Ben Cook, the song was first a reggae track meant for Greig Nori's band Treble Charger, with the rapper Snow on the verses. Drummer Steve Jocz confirmed this in a YouTube video.
The video, directed by Marc Klasfeld, parodies the diving contest in the Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School. The band faces a rival team of stereotypical jocks in red Speedos, and the guitarist climbs out of the pool to play his solo.
In Too Deep runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.