Songfacts®:

• Running just 1:06, "How Many" is the first song and title track of Julia Cannon's 2023 album. It finds her asking herself a series of questions:
  
  How many pizzas can I order before it gets sad?
  How many issues can I blame on my absentee dad?
  
  "I've got a complicated family history," she explained to Songfacts. "I cope with humor. These are deep things that I've always been able to take in stride with humor, and I just thought it would be a really good introduction to me and how I process things.
  
  I didn't think about it that much when I wrote the song, but looking back at it now, it's like, Yep, those things have always been there."
• Cannon put the song on Soundcloud seven years before making it the title track to her album. Re-listening to it gave her the impetus for the project. "I'm a productive procrastinator, so back in college when I was supposed to be working on something else, that just happened when I was messing around in my apartment in Boston," she told Songfacts. "I put it on Soundcloud and sometimes I would go back and listen to it. I'd be like, 'This is fun. I should do something with this.' I was listening to it when I was going through my first run of therapy, and I realized I've always been aware of these feelings, I just haven't paid them that much attention."
• Like the rest of the album, Cannon wrote, produced and mixed the song herself. She also financed it herself through crowdfunding.
  
  Cannon landed at the Berklee College of Music in Boston after growing up in Alaska. She got some attention in 2022 after appearing at the Newport Folk Festival, with Rolling Stone among the publications singing her praises.