“Before the Words” is the second track on My Brightest Diamond’s 2014 record This is My Hand.

The song is about the origin of music as we know it.

In an interview with Wondering Sound, Shara Worden stated:

The song “Before the Words” is really about that exactly. It’s my version of an information song — how we used to teach each other [“The Alphabet Song”], the kinds of things we use computers and books for. In “Before the Words” I was thinking about these really basic things: your mother’s heartbeat, you being in the womb listening to the blood pulsing through your mother’s body, and maybe your mother sang to you. Maybe you’re hearing her speech or her singing.

In The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond, he talks about how the older part of the brain is the sound-making part of the brain — it’s even older than language. So I guess I was [thinking], “Let’s get back to the basics of music.” What does it mean to us? How is it that we experience it from the very moment that we are conceived? How fundamental is music to the human experience? It’s inextricable. You can’t separate our relationship to music ever. There’s not a culture that we know of that didn’t have music.

Essentially, the idea here is that music is a force that is stronger than the forms into which we pour it. It transcends its structure. It is a breath we share.