Many of you might have seen this already, but for those who haven’t…

I came across this Call Me By Fire 2026 performance of “Her” (她) and, well… I think we can safely establish that these gentlemen are no-Nings (no offense meant!).

But how could they be?
There is only —— One Ning 😉

Everyone else who decides to sing one of his more difficult songs is already putting themselves in a tough position.
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For the fourth public performance of Call Me By Fire 2026, Xiao Shenyang, Shawn Yue, Li Guangjie and Guo Xiaodong performed Liu Yuning’s “Her,” the opening theme and Luan Nian character song from The Early Spring.
And as it turned out LYN had actually warned Xiao Shenyang beforehand.
Xiao Shenyang contacted him while they were preparing the song and asked for advice. LYN gave him some pointers and told him quite plainly that this song is difficult to sing. The program’s vocal team apparently agreed — its singing difficulty was described as extremely high and demanding of the performer.
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Then the performance aired, and Chinese social media had… opinions.

“Her — sounds bad” (她 难听)

made it onto Weibo’s hot search ! 🤯😆

Guo Xiaodong received much of the criticism over his pitch and breath control. After his elimination, he responded rather graciously, saying he hadn’t dared listen back to the performance yet and thanking people for their tolerance.
Xiao Shenyang, unsurprisingly, was generally singled out as the strongest singer of the four.
I don’t particularly want to berate any of them. They got onstage and attempted a genuinely difficult song. What I find much more interesting is what happened around the performance: people went looking for Liu Yuning’s original.
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Chinese media reported a jump in plays of the original

after the episode aired, while “The original singer of ‘Her’ is Liu Yuning” (她的原唱是刘宇宁) became part of the online discussion.

QQ Music reportedly had more than 15,000 people listening to it simultaneously late at night, while its combined QQ Music and Kugou collections passed 900,000.
And the comments under the MangoTV upload are full of people telling others to go listen to Liu Yuning’s version — including comments specifically pointing out how well he sings it live.
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Which brings me back to why I find the whole thing interesting.

“Her” became iconic remarkably fast.

Part of that is undoubtedly The Early Spring. The hit drama gave the song a huge audience, and it became closely associated with Luan Nian.
Part of it is simply that “Her” is a very good song.
And part of it is Liu Yuning.
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“Her” does not sound effortless when LYN sings it. (again, no offence, boo).

Quite the opposite: you can hear that it is technically demanding. Much of it sits in or repeatedly moves through his head voice / upper register, and the exposed, sustained phrasing requires very good breath support, pitch stability, register control and clean transitions. The difficulty is part of what you hear in his performance — he simply has the technique to execute it (because he is the best 🤷🏻‍♀️)

That matters when talking about why one particular recording of a song catches fire. A drama can introduce millions of people to an OST, and a great composition gives the singer something worth working with. But the singer still has to make people want to hear it again.
LYN did.
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The song has also traveled well beyond the drama. It has been covered outside China, including by Gyumin of the Korean group XODIAC, and this Call Me By Fire performance has now sent another group of listeners looking for the original.
Not quite the outcome the four gentlemen onstage were hoping for, I imagine.

But I’m not going to be mean to them for proving something their original singer had already warned them about:
“Her” is really bloody hard to sing.

All things considered, apart from one of them who I think should have called in sick 🫣 that day, they all did a solid job with such a difficult song — don’t forget these guys aren’t singers.

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Yours,
NoRecipe ✨
OneNing

Zach is back with a second Liu Yuning vocal analysis — and this time he has Zhou Shen in the mix too.
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He is analyzing their duet performance of 《自诩周全》 (Zìxǔ Zhōuquán) from Crush of Music 2, and the contrast between their voices gives him quite a bit to work with. Zach actually describes the performance as a “clear vocal dichotomy,” looking at how two very different voices approach the same song.
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A small note on the English title: Zach uses “Self-Praised Comprehensiveness,” which is also the English title you’ll sometimes see attached to official uploads but which makes little sense 🤭

In this subreddit, we’ve generally used “Self-Deprecating Love” or “Self-Proclaimed Thoughtfulness,” as we find they better reflect the meaning of the song and its lyrics.
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If you want to go back to the performances he is discussing, we already have both versions in the sub:
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• The original ⁠Crush of Music 2⁠ performance — Liu Yuning
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• Liu Yuning performing “Self-Proclaimed Thoughtfulness” at his Hangzhou concert — Vivian fancam⁠
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And if you missed Zach’s first Liu Yuning analysis, that was his breakdown of “Find You” (寻一个你), where he was rather pleased to finally have a baritone to analyze.
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Yours,
NoRecipe
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OneNing

Shadow Punisher (魅影神捕) premieres today on iQIYI, and Liu Yuning is singing its theme song.
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《有魅》 (Yǒu Mèi), which I’m translating here as “Bewitching,” was released on September 30. The song is written by Diwu Ji, Xiaoshi Guniang and Chen Pingping, composed by Xiaoshi Guniang and EZM, produced by Xiaoshi Guniang and arranged by EZM.
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The drama is a 30-episode costume mystery series starring Luo Yunxi, Fang Yilun, Shen Yujie, He Hongshan and Wang Haixiang. Luo Yunxi plays Li Si, who leads the Divine Constable Bureau as they investigate a series of increasingly strange cases that appear to have supernatural explanations.
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The arrangement of 《有魅》 combines orchestral strings and guitar with the xun, dadi and erhu. The xun (埙) is an ancient clay wind instrument with a low, hollow and rather haunting sound; the dadi (大笛) is a large, lower-pitched Chinese transverse flute; and the erhu (二胡) is a two-stringed bowed instrument known for its very expressive, voice-like sound. They fit rather naturally into a song written for a historical mystery full of shadows, strange cases and things that may not be quite what they seem.
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The lyrics

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Capture my heart, unravel my feelings.
Can I revisit the mark you once left branded there?
It turns out everyone is afraid of loving too deeply.
It takes only a moment to fall, but a lifetime may not be enough to make peace with it.
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Through the long, restless night, breaking through a maze.
Will I ever meet again those I don’t dare to face?
One thought can carry you across the sea of suffering; one can consume you in flames.
A thousand schemes still cannot reckon it all — in the end, everything becomes a wisp of dust.
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I dare not forget, and I have no regrets.
In love, I fear neither life nor death.
I dare not let the thought arise — who possesses such bewitching allure?
Then let my heart hide within your shadow and follow you forever.
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Who, from within the abyss, is pursuing a piece of the past?
Who is the ferryman — ferrying others, ferrying oneself, crossing half a lifetime?
Where is the other shore? Facing the shadow, there is no answer.
I can see through truth and falsehood, yet cannot see through love and hate.
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I dare not forget, and I have no regrets.
In love, I fear neither life nor death.
I dare not let the thought arise — who possesses such bewitching allure?
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I dare not speak recklessly of this heart-rending pain.
Only in love does it not wither.
Seeing, yet choosing not to see — who possesses such bewitching allure?
Then let my heart remain within your shadow, following you forever.
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So why “Bewitching”?

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The title is 《有魅》:
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有魅
Yǒu Mèi
“To possess 魅 — an alluring, captivating or bewitching quality.”
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魅 (mèi) can mean charm, fascination or an alluring quality, while also carrying older associations with spirits and the uncanny. That second layer works particularly well with a mystery drama whose Chinese title is 魅影神捕.
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But I think the chorus makes the intended sense much clearer:
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不敢动念，是谁有魅
Bù gǎn dòngniàn, shì shuí yǒu mèi
“I dare not let the thought arise — who possesses such bewitching allure?”
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是谁有魅 (shì shuí yǒu mèi) is asking who has the 魅. So I wouldn’t translate the title as “Enchanted,” because that describes the person affected by it. Here, it is the other person who possesses this captivating quality — hence “Bewitching.”
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There is another nice bit of wordplay right at the beginning:
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捕我的心，解我的情
Bǔ wǒ de xīn, jiě wǒ de qíng
“Capture my heart; unravel my feelings.”
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捕 (bǔ) means to catch or capture and is also the 捕 in 神捕 (shénbǔ). 解 (jiě) can mean to unravel, decipher or solve. And in English, “capture my heart” naturally carries the idea of captivating someone’s heart too.
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That detective vocabulary continues through the lyrics: there are mazes to break, schemes to calculate and truth and falsehood to see through. And then we get:
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堪破了真伪，看不破爱恨
Kānpò le zhēnwěi, kàn bù pò àihèn
“I can see through truth and falsehood, yet cannot see through love and hate.”
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I really like that idea for a mystery drama theme. You can solve the case, work out what is real and what isn’t, and still be completely useless when it comes to your own heart. And the recurring 魅 and 影 — allure and shadow — tying the lyrics back to 魅影神捕 is clever without feeling forced.
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It is also a rather Liu Yuning sort of OST: dark, dramatic, a little haunting, and naturally he gets handed lyrics about following someone forever through suffering, fire and possibly death. Business as usual.
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Song: 《有魅》 (Yǒu Mèi) — Bewitching
Singer: Liu Yuning (刘宇宁)
Drama: Shadow Punisher (魅影神捕)
OST: Theme Song
Song release: September 30, 2026
Drama premiere: October 2, 2026
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Sources / Listen:
Liu Yuning’s original release post
LINE Music — song, lyrics & full credits
iQIYI — Shadow Punisher
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Yours,
NoRecipe
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OneNing

>第48届世界技能大赛闭幕式主题曲《照亮》今天上线啦。
世界于你我。是未探索的一片辽阔。
技能改变世界。技能照亮前程。
一起来听歌。再次为世赛。为选手。为技能。点赞。

>The theme song for the Closing Ceremony of the 48th WorldSkills Competition, 《照亮》, is out today!
The world, for you and me, is a vast expanse yet to be explored.
Skills change the world. Skills light the way to the future.
Let’s listen to the song and once again give a thumbs-up to the WorldSkills Competition, the competitors, and skills. 

According to the post on Liu Yuning’s Weibo 摩登兄弟刘宇宁, the song he performed at the Closing Ceremony of the 48th WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 - originally presented during the livestream as 《技能之约》'A Promise of Skills' - has now been released under the title 《照亮》 as the theme song of the event.

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Edit: The word 《照亮》 itself can be translated as ‘Illuminate’ or ‘Light Up’.

The theme of light is mentioned repeatedly throughout the song. For example: My skills are the light, hands light the flame, human skills are lights… Through these skills, we can create a brighter future.

Yours, HJ!
🌻
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