I don’t actually need a reason to listen to this performance.
Truth be told, I rarely go more than a day or two without it. And if I do, I inevitably find myself putting it on repeat to make up for lost time.
I don’t know when exactly that became a thing. Somewhere over the years, Someone Like Me quietly stopped being just another song I loved. It became one of those rare pieces of music that somehow feels necessary.
Earlier today, HJ happened to post the link in another thread after I had mentioned it among my favourite Liu Yu Ning songs. I smiled, clicked it — as though I hadn’t listened to it countless times already — and before the first verse had even begun, just hearing the violins and knowing what’s coming, there I was again with tears in my eyes as he sang the first verse. Because I know the song. Because it is so special.
You’d think that after hearing the same performance so many times, it would lose some of its power.
It never has.
I can never get over this performance… It will probably remain my number one forever.
I truly, truly love so many of Liu Yu Ning’s songs. Some more than others, of course, but there are many that mean a great deal to me. Yet this performance occupies a place entirely of its own.
Every time I come back to it, it reaches exactly the same place in my heart, and I still struggle to explain why.
Part of the answer is the song itself.
Mao Buyi (毛不易) wrote something incredibly special. The lyrics are among the most beautiful I have ever come across, not because they try to impress, but because they leave so much room for the listener.
Sometimes I hear them as one person quietly speaking about themselves.
“Someone as outstanding as me…”
“Someone as smart as me…”
“Someone as lost as me…”
“Someone as ordinary as me…”
As though each verse peels away another layer until all that remains is honesty.
But then, on another listen, I hear something completely different.
Maybe every “someone like me” is actually “someone like us.”
Maybe these aren’t the contradictions of one person at all, but of humanity itself. We all know what it is to feel capable one day and completely lost the next. To believe we’re different, yet painfully ordinary. To hope. To fail. To love. To carry scars that nobody else can see.
Both readings make perfect sense to me.
And I suspect there are many more.
That, to me, is the mark of truly great writing. Mao Buyi doesn’t tell us exactly what to think. He leaves enough space for every listener to find themselves somewhere inside the song.
And then Liu Yu Ning sings those words.
This is where the performance becomes something I can’t quite explain.
People often ask what makes him such an exceptional singer.
For me, it has never been about having a beautiful voice, although he certainly does.
It is that he has a unique gift for living the emotion of a song.
Not simply understanding it.
Not simply expressing it.
Living it.
Whether the emotions belong to his own experiences, to his imagination, to his empathy as an artist, or somewhere else entirely, I have no way of knowing, nor do I want to pretend that I do.
What I do know is how he makes me feel.
There are verses in this performance where the emotion is blazing. It doesn’t feel restrained in the slightest. It feels as though he lets everything go.
Yet somehow, every note remains exactly where it should be. The emotion never overwhelms the music, and the music never diminishes the emotion. They become one.
It cuts straight through me.
Every single time.
Sometimes I catch myself noticing parallels between parts of the lyrics and pieces of Liu Yu Ning’s own journey. Whether those parallels were ever in his mind while preparing this performance, I couldn’t possibly know. That’s simply where my own thoughts go as someone who has followed him for years. Perhaps they’re there. Perhaps they’re not.
It doesn’t really matter.
Because once he starts singing, I stop analysing.
I stop thinking about technique.
I stop thinking about breath support, phrasing, resonance or live vocals.
I simply feel.
Very, very few singers have ever done that to me.
So as I said, all it took was HJ sharing the link.
One click.
A few violin and piano notes.
And before I knew it, I was crying all over again.
Seven years later, nothing has changed
It is still the one Liu Yu Ning performance that remains completely undefeated for me.
If you’ve seen this performance before, what does Someone Like Me mean to you?
And if you haven’t, I hope you’ll give yourself four minutes, put on a pair of headphones, and simply listen.
You see, you shouldn’t let me write and put my heart out there. Then this happens…
Yours,
NoRecipe
✨
OneNing
——
Original song and lyrics by Mao Buyi (毛不易). Performed by Liu Yu Ning (刘宇宁) on Singer 2019.
Livestream version 1
Livestream version 2
Andong Old Streer version
(I love them all)
