Songfacts®:

• Grouplove guitarist Andrew Wessen wrote this song. The band explained its meaning to iHeartRadio: "It's about stepping up. Life has moments where you can step up, and it's sort of like be a cannonball. Just, make your mark. Do what you gotta do and to not just burn out. Not just stay on your phone all day, except you're probably on the phone watching/reading this, so ... sorry."
• This was the most difficult Big Mess track to produce. Keyboardist Hannah Hooper recalled to Radio.com.
  
  "Andrew came in with 'Cannonball' and he wanted me to sing the lyrics and it didn't feel right. I actually re-wrote all the lyrics at one point. I was like, these are Andrew's words and even though we're best friends he's a surfer and lives in Venice and he's a man… ha ha. It just didn't feel like it was me. Whenever I'm singing, I wrote the lyrics to that part.
  
  That was the first time Andrew and I had a real head-to-head and he's - as all artists are - sensitive about their work. So that was the hardest song for me but I absolutely love the way it turned out. We found an amazing balance of how to share that song vocally."
• A cannonball is a spherical solid projectile fired from a cannon. During land battles, a cannonball would often plough through many ranks of troops, causing multiple casualties. Grouplove are using the cannonball in this song as a way of illustration how they want to make their mark. Other artists that used the cannonball as a metaphor include The Breeders, Supertramp, Damien Rice and Lea Michele.