With a simple set of lyrics about waking up in the morning and one of the fastest paces of any song on the Willoughby’s Beach EP, “Lunch Meat” is also the shortest at one minute and forty seconds.
A demo of the song was released on Demos Vol. 5: Music To Think Existentially To and is double the length of the studio version at three minutes and eleven seconds. Unlike many demos from the timeframe, the “Lunch Meat” demo was recorded by the band rather than Stu alone. It features a few differences, such as the choruses lacking the melody heard in the final version and a slower, softer middle section that alternates between D and E before moving back to the chorus. The studio version was released on October 21st, 2011.
While first reported on 2010-11-25, the earliest confirmed performance of “Lunch Meat” was at a supposed Christmas function for Forte Magazine at the Geelong Gaol in Geelong on 2011-02-12. These pre-Willoughby’s versions of the song are in line with the demo rather than the final studio version. While few performances of these songs from 2011-2012 are known, we do know that they switched away from the demo version. The final appearance of the song based on available information was on 2014-10-24 at Brandeis University in Waltham, with footage appearing in the documentary BOOTLEG HOLIDAY FROM HELL.