From the album Bleech 9:3 - EP
This is a song about loving something that only knows how to fall. The cannonball gets credit for teaching flight, but cannonballs don't fly , they arc and crash. By the end, the devotion cracks into scorekeeping: 'I guess we'll see who needs who' pulls the rug out from under every promise to fall together.
The way you showed me how to fly / I take you out and put you to the test
Cannonballs don't fly. They fall with purpose. Crediting this object with flight means the narrator is already rewriting physics to justify attachment. 'Put you to the test' sounds like trust, but it's the language of checking whether something still works.
If this night falls down hard on you / You know I'll be / Falling too
Falling together gets framed as solidarity, maybe even romance. But falling isn't a choice you make with someone , it's what happens when the ground disappears. The narrator thinks they're promising devotion. Really, they're describing mutual collapse.
I wouldn't know where I could begin / To say these things I feel for you
The word 'love' never shows up. Neither does 'need' until the very end, when it gets weaponized. The narrator catalogs feeling without naming it , either because it's too big to say or because saying it out loud would expose how lopsided this is.
I guess we'll see / Who needs who
Every other chorus promised to fall in sync. This one switches to a test of dependency, like the song just realized it's been keeping score the whole time. That shift from 'I'll be falling too' to 'who needs who' is the sound of someone realizing they might need this more than it needs them.
This song thinks it's about devotion, but it's actually about dependency with a bad metaphor. Cannonballs fall. That's the whole point. Calling that flight doesn't make it love , it just means you're already spinning the story before you hit the ground.
Bleech 9:3's "Cannonball" depicts devotion to something inherently destructive, where the speaker credits their subject with flight despite its nature being to arc and crash. In Scalpel's line-by-line reading, the song's promises of falling together fracture into scorekeeping, with the final line "I guess we'll see who needs who" undermining every earlier vow of mutual descent.
"Cannonball" by Bleech 9:3 explores cannonballs don't fly, falling together as intimacy, she can't name what she feels, and the final scorekeeping. The central thread is cannonballs don't fly: The object of devotion is literally defined by descent, but the narrator rewrites that as flight , confusing the arc with escape, the crash with freedom. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
"Cannonball" by Bleech 9:3 was released on January 19, 2026 on the album "Bleech 9:3, EP". Scalpel's analysis covers the full lyrics of the 2026 release.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "Cannonball" by Bleech 9:3 lands here: This song thinks it's about devotion, but it's actually about dependency with a bad metaphor. Cannonballs fall.