27) Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Part 2

If you need me, call me
No matter where you are
No matter how far (Don't worry, baby)
Just call my name
I'll be there in a hurry
You don't have to worry
Cause baby there

Ain't no mountain high enough
Ain't no valley low enough
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you, babe


Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake, and today we are continuing our deep dive into the song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. But! before we get to that, I want to welcome our new listeners. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, I am thrilled that you decided to join us. One very quick note, before listening to this episode, I would highly recommend going back and listening to the episode titled "Introduction", for a quick explanation of how this podcast works and some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of this podcast. And for everyone else, if you haven't listened to Part 1 of this series, I'd recommend going back and listening to it before continuing.

Oh yeah! And don't forget to tell your friends about us!

Ok, with all that out of the way, let's get started.

We left off last week right before the bridge of the song, so let's jump right back in where we left off.

The next line says "If you need me, call me"

Now, at first glance, this looks pretty straightforward, that is to say, it's not very complicated. If you need me, call me! In modern usage, the most common version of the phrase "call me", is talking about a phone call. Now, it's possible that the songwriter DID mean a phone call here, but in a few lines we're actually going to see another sense of the phrase "call me". Maybe the writer was doing some wordplay, comparing the two, but we can't really be sure! Let's continue on and see if we can find that second meaning.

The next two lines say "No matter where you are, no matter how far", and we hear the phrase "don't worry baby" added at the end as well.

Let's start with this first part. "No matter where you are". What does this mean? We'll focus on the word "matter". If something "matters", that means it's important. For example, "It matters how you do your work" means that the way that you do your work is important. It's not just the fact that you've done the work, but the method that you've used to do it that is important. It matters. If something "doesn't matter", that's means it's not important. For example, "It doesn't matter how fat I get, I'm not going to stop eating donuts." This mean that, to me, it's not important that I'm gaining a lot of weight, I will continue to eat donuts anyway.

So when the singer says "No matter where you are", that means, it's not important where they are. If the singer is needed, it's not important where the other person is, the singer will still come help them. This works with other words as well. "No matter where" "No matter who" "No matter why" "No matter what".

And we see another example in our second line. "No matter how far..." Here, we're still talking about the location of the other person. The full sentence would be something like "No matter how far away from me you are." That is to say, it's not important how far you are from me, even if it's a long distance, I will help you."

You can hear a similar encouragement in the song. "Don't worry baby". They are telling the other person not to worry, it doesn't matter what sort of situation they are in, or how far away they are, they will be helped!

Our next line follows up from this. It says "Just call my name". So the full phrase is "No matter where you are, no matter how far, just call my name."

Here we see that second usage of the word "call". This time, it's clear that we aren't talking about calling somebody on the phone. Instead, it's "call my name". What does it mean to call someone's name? Well, it means to yell their name! If my wife and I are at the store, and we get separated there, I might hear her call my name. "Jake! Jake! Where are you?" And, no matter where I am, I'll be able to find her.

So our singer is saying that if this other person needs help, they just need to call out his name and he will come to help. The singer is obviously exaggerating a bit, as it would be impossible to hear somebody calling out your name from very far away, but the point is that they are ready and willing to help out, no matter what! That is to say, no matter what is happening.

There are a lot of different phrases we can use with the word "call". You can call somebody's name, or "call out" someone's name. You can call someone, that is, call them on the phone. You can also call somebody BY name, which means that you're specifically using their name when you normally wouldn't. For example, my son, normally, calls me "papa". If he was yelling for me and saying "Jake! Jake!" we would say that he was "Calling me BY name" which implies that normally he would not do that, and usually, that the circumstances require it.

Again, there's a lot of phrases that we can use with the word call, those are just a few.

The next line says "I'll be there in a hurry, you don't have to worry"

To do something "in a hurry" means to do something very quickly. It means that you are RUSHING or going fast to do that thing. If I find out at the last minute that guests are coming over, I will probably clean the house "in a hurry". If I am late for school, I might "hurry to get to class". If I have an appointment I am late for, I might finish my work "in a hurry".

So you can do something in a hurry, or you can hurry to do something. Simple enough!

So our singer is saying that no matter where the other person is, if they just yell out his name, he will rush to get to where they are and help them. They don't need to worry!

This next line jumps us to our chorus...

"Cause baby, there ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no mountain low enough, ain't no river wide enough, to keep me from getting to you babe"

We already talked in our previous episode about the chorus, but we didn't have the last part yet, that explains what exactly there ain't no mountain high enough to do. And the answer?

"To keep me from getting to you babe"

Some of you might remember our series on the song, "Four, Five Seconds". In episode 8, where we talked about the bridge and verse 3, we also talked about the phrase "to keep from". I won't go over it in detail here, but feel free to listen to that episode for a more detailed explanation. Basically, it just means to prevent or to stop something from happening. In this case, our singer is trying to help someone who has asked them for help. They are saying that there isn't a mountain in the world that is too high, or a valley that is too low, or a river that is too wide, that they wouldn't be able to get to this other person to help them. The idea here is that they would go through any difficulty, no matter how impossible it seems, to help this other person. They would climb the highest mountain, they would swim across the widest river, just to help this other person in need. This is an expression of deep love and care.

And that's where we're going to end the song today! We'll pick it up next time right here. I hope that there ain't no mountain high enough to keep you from listening to the next episode! I'll talk to you then.

As always, you can find the transcript for this episode in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate it and subscribe, wherever you're listening to it! And of course, don't forget to tell your friends about us! We post a new episode every Wednesday! We also have even more English learning related content on Instagram, just search for the username "lelpodcast". Finally, if you have any questions, comments, critiques, or suggestions for songs, don't hesitate to send us a message to any of our social media accounts, or to our email address "[email protected]". We hope to hear from you soon!