Songfacts®:

• "Cannibal" details Marcus Mumford's childhood experience of sexual abuse. The incident occurred when he was 6 years old; the abuser was someone unconnected with his family and church (his parents play a significant leadership role within the Vineyard family of churches).
  
  For 30 years, Mumford kept the traumatic topic to himself. Then in January 2021, he finally confronted his demons and wrote this song about it.
• After writing "Cannibal," Mumford took the song to his producer friend Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple, Laura Marling). They developed the song and wrote the rest of Mumford's first solo album, Self-Titled. Mumford decided to make the stripped-back acoustic cut the first song on the record.
  
  "I felt like it had to go first," he told GQ. "I started sort of apologizing for it, in my head. But it's like: That's not right, either."
• Track 2 on the album is "Grace," a song Mumford wrote about the conversation he had with his mother after he played her "Cannibal."
• Mumford and Mills recorded "Cannibal" at Sound City studios in LA, where Neil Young laid down After The Gold Rush and Nirvana Nevermind. Mumford and Mills also provided most of the instrumentation, with the pair both on drums and acoustic and electric guitar. Mills also played organ, percussion and synthesizer, and legendary session drummer Jim Keltner added cymbals.
• Steven Spielberg directed the song's visual – his first music video. He filmed it in one continuous shot using his phone to capture the footage. Spielberg's wife, Kate Capshaw, served as "producer, art director and dolly grip," and the director's longtime producer/videographer Kristie Macosko Krieger also assisted. "When people get it, it blows my mind," said Mumford. "Kate and Steven just got it, and I cannot thank them enough. Thank you Kate. Thank you Kristie. Thank you Steven."
  
  Mumford's wife, actress Carey Mulligan, was also on set. The singer tasked her with costumes and sound.
• At first, Marcus Mumford wasn't sure if "Cannibal" and "Grace" would be songs for next Mumford & Sons album, but after playing them to his bandmates, he knew they had to form a solo record. "I played it to them and they just knew straight away," he told NME. "All of them were like, 'Yeah, this feels like a solo record; it has to be a solo record.' They were so supportive."
• When Mumford started writing the song, he looked through his handwritten lyric books and noticed the word "cannibal" came up a lot. "It was rattling around my brain until I got it in the right place in this song," he told Elton John on his Apple Music Rocket Hour show. "And it just felt like the right way to start the record. It's an intense way to start a record, but once I'd written it, there was no hiding from it."