The 1994 Jam That Became 'Louder than Words' on The Endless River

“Louder than Words” started life as an instrumental jam called “The Big Spliff,” recorded during The Division Bell sessions in 1993-94. The band had toyed with it for years, but it didn’t get words until David Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson revisited the tape while assembling The Endless River in 2014.

Samson’s lyrics are basically a meta-commentary on Pink Floyd itself—how the members could barely talk to each other for decades but still made something beautiful when they played. The title turns the old cliché on its head: music really was louder than words for this band. Lines like “It’s louder than words / This thing that we do” capture the bittersweet paradox of a group that connected through sound but not conversation.