26) Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Part 1

Listen, baby
Ain't no mountain high
Ain't no valley low
Ain't no river wide enough, baby



Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake, and today I am super excited to be starting on a new song! But before we get to that, if this is your first time listening to this podcast, welcome! I'm thrilled that you decided to join us. Before listening to this episode, I'd recommend going back and listening to the episode titled "Introduction" for a quick explanation of how this podcast works. It will help you to get to know how to listen to this podcast a little bit better. Ok, with that out of the way...how is everybody doing? Let's get started on our new song! Today we are going to talk about a classic song, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. I will include a link to the song in the description, so give it a listen before continuing this episode.

Alright, did you listen to it? Great.

This song is one of my all-time favorites! An "all-time" favorite is something that you love more than all of the other things that you love. Another way you can say the same phrase is to say "This is one of my favorites of all time" which might make the meaning a little bit clearer for you. The idea is that if you look at all of time, that is to say, all of history, and you had to pick out a list of your favorites, THIS one would be on that list. It's not just your favorite this year, or last week. It's so good it's one of your favorites...ever!

You can use this same phrase in other contexts as well. For example, you could say "Michael Jordan is one of the all-time GREATEST basketball players". Of every basketball player that has ever lived, Michael Jordan is one of the best. The best...OF the best. He's one step higher.

Alright, so let's talk more about the song. This song originally came out in 1967 and like many classic songs, has been covered by many artists over the years. I prefer the original version, but there are more modern versions you can find on-line!

It is a song about enduring love, and it's a song that can't  help but put a smile on your face when you hear it. I get excited every time I hear the introduction music.

With all of that being said, let's jump into the song itself.

It starts off with two simple words: "Listen Baby"

This is an imperative, a command. "Listen!" or "Listen to me!" Normally this would be a pretty rude thing to say. It's very strong, and usually telling someone to "listen" is said when you are annoyed! But, like everything, it depends on the tone, or how you say it. The context is also important, and in this case, the singer is a bout to say something very kind, so no rudeness intended here!

You are all probably well-familiar with the word "baby" here. He's of course not referring to a literal baby, that is, a very small child, but his love interest. We call words like these, that is, sweet words that are used to refer to your significant other, "terms of endearment". "Baby" or "Babe" is probably the most common one that you'll hear. Can you think of any others? Pause right here and see how many you can list. Alright, let's see if any of the ones I'm going to mention are on your list.

Another very popular term of endearment  is "honey", which is a bit more general. "Honey" can also be shortened to simply "Hon". While normally reserved for romantic partners, in places like the American south, it's very common for women, especially older women, to refer to everybody around them as "honey". They aren't flirting with you! It's just a very sweet (literally) way to refer to someone.

"Darling" is another one you might have heard. This one is a bit old-fashioned, and mostly used ironically nowadays. However, you might still hear it from time to time.

"Dear" or "Dearest" is one that you will hear ALL the time. If something is "dear" to you, that means that it is something that you love very much. So to call someone "dear" is to say that they are dear to you, that is, you love them very much. To call someone "dearest" means that you love them the most of anything! They are the dearest thing in the world to you.

Connected to this word is a wonderful phrase, "near and dear to my heart". Obviously it sounds nice because it rhymes. But what does it mean? Well, if you are describing something that you love very DEARLY, usually with some sort of history attached to it, or a sense of nostalgia, you could say that it is "near and dear to your heart". What are some things in your life that are near and dear to your heart?

"Sweetheart" is another romantic one, that it is not as common, but still used quite regularly. It can be shortened to "sweetie".

For a more modern term of endearment, we have the word "Bae". B-A-E. I'm not sure what the origins of it are, but it obviously sounds very similar to "babe". Some people claim that it is an acronym, meaning "Before anyone else". I'm not so sure about that, but you'll hear this one quite a bit, depending on where you are.

Alright, we'll stop there. There are probably about a million more, but we can't talk about them all. What are some of your favorites to use? What are your favorites to be called? Do you have any interesting terms of endearment in your own language? I've got a challenge for you. Take a term of endearment in your language, and translate it into English, then send it to me. I love stuff like that. You can send it to us on Instagram  @lelpodcast, or email us at [email protected].

Ok, we've covered two whole words of our song so far, "listen" and "baby", so we had better start moving a little bit faster.

Our next few lines say, "Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough, baby"

Hey! This is starting to sound a little bit like the title of our song!

Obviously, we have a problem immediately. I'm sure many of you saw the problem in the title of our song. Do you know what it is?

It's the word "ain't". As we've talked about before, this is not grammatically correct! However, in a song or in certain contexts, it's not really a problem. For example, if you live in the American south for example, it's very common to use the word "ain't" in spoken English. I don't mind if you guys say it, but do not write it, or use it on a test, okay? The word ain't is extremely casual and at times it can make you appear unintelligent. In general, I say avoid it, but it really depends on who you're hanging out with and what the context is. In this song, for example, it's great.

Now, this particular phrase actually gets a bit more complicated, and there's actually at least one other major problem. Let's start by cleaning up the phrase into something a bit more grammatically standard.

So with the phrase "Ain't no mountain high", he's going to later add the word "enough" at the end, so we'll start there. "Ain't no mountain high enough." There is also an implied "There" at the beginning, so now we have "There ain't no mountain high enough". But of course we've forgotten to fix our word "ain't", so, let's make it more clear.  "Ain't" of course, represents the word "Isn't" which is a contraction for the words "Is" and "not". Contractions are fine, but I want to highlight something specific in our sentence, so we'll expand it out all the way. Our sentence now says "There is not no mountain high enough".

Do you see our second major problem now?

It's that word "No". What we have here is something called a "double negative". A double negative is when you have two negations, two negative words together in the same phrase. The problem with a double negative is that they cancel each other out, that is to say, if you negate a negative, you are left with a positive. For example, I can say "There are no donuts." or I can say "There aren't any donuts". Both of those deliver the sad, sad news, that we are out of donuts, that is to say, someone has eaten all the donuts. Let's be honest it was probably me. But, if I say "There aren't no donuts", I'm negating or canceling the fact that there are no donuts, and now it sounds like I'm saying that there ARE donuts. Two negatives equal a positive.

Normally, this is frowned upon, that is to say, you shouldn't use double negatives. It's not grammatically correct. However, as with everything, there are a few exceptions, especially in spoken English, where it can make sense to use a double negative for emphasis. In general, I recommend avoiding them.

One of the most common English mistakes I hear, is with the phrase "I'm not going anywhere". Many people will say "I'm not going nowhere." Notice the double negative. Not and nowhere. If you're not going "nowhere", that means  that you're going "somewhere", which is generally not what you're trying to say there. You can either say "I'm not going ANYWHERE" or "I'm going nowhere". But you can't "not go nowhere".


I see the same problem with the word "nothing". This time I'm going to give you the incorrect phrase, and you try to figure out how to say it correctly. The incorrect phrase that I hear all the time is "He doesn't have nothing." How do we say this correctly? We can say either "He has nothing." or we can say "He doesn't have ANYTHING". We cannot say "He doesn't have nothing."

This is one to be careful and watch out for.

Now, back to our song. We've corrected our phrase almost all the way. "There isn't no mountain high enough". How can we fix the double negative? Pause here for a second and see if you can figure it out.

We can either say "There isn't ANY mountain high enough" or, we can say "There IS no mountain high enough". Both of these mean the same thing, we just put our negation in a different place. A third option is possible as well, you could say "There isn't a mountain that is high enough", but that is a bit longer and doesn't sound as nice.

So, "There is no mountain high enough"...high enough to do what? Our singer is claiming that there isn't a mountain that is high enough, or a valley that is low enough, or a river that is wide enough... to do something, but he doesn't finish what he's saying. He'll let us know what he means later in the song. But! We're out of time for right now, and we'll talk about that when we reach the chorus. Until then, thanks for listening, and I hope that you didn't not enjoy the podcast today. I'll talk to you all soon!

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!