On the evening of May 31st, the results of the fourth round of competition of the mainland variety show “Singer 2024” (Singer 5) were announced. The well-known mainland singer Na Ying, who had previously ranked third overall, suffered a third consecutive defeat to Western singers, causing her ranking to drop to fifth place. She chose to perform Jay Chou’s “Nunchucks” and severely went off-key, sparking discussions on the top of Weibo’s hot search list.
Due to the competition’s emphasis on live broadcasting without post-production tuning, “Singer 2024” has gained immense popularity since its premiere. Although Na Ying, known as the “Queen of Chinese music” and the only mainland singer who has won the Taiwan Golden Melody Award for “Best Female Singer,” she faced criticism from Canadian vocal teacher Rozette for her previous performance of the song “Silent” being questioned for having post-production tuning. While Na Ying did not directly respond to the criticism, she confessed on a variety show that singing live without tuning is “extremely stressful,” and every performance on stage makes her nervous to the point of breaking down.
During the live broadcast on May 31st, Na Ying performed Jay Chou’s song “Nunchucks,” which turned out to be a disaster. It is already challenging for a female singer to tackle a male singer’s low notes, and perhaps due to a key change, Na Ying failed to grasp the pitch properly, resulting in the entire song being off-key and off-pitch, prompting mainland netizens to break out in a cold sweat upon hearing it.
As the program continued to air, the topic “Na Ying going off-key” trended as the top search on Weibo. Many netizens posted comments while watching the live broadcast, expressing surprise at Na Ying’s severe off-key singing in the fourth round, saying things like “Oh my, it’s already the fourth round, surely no one can miss how badly Na Ying is going off-key,” “Oh my, she is the Mandarin Queen,” “I never expected that Na Ying would mess up ‘Nunchucks’,” and some also pointed out that Na Ying seems a bit unable to relax on the stage of “Singer 2024,” appearing nervous every time.
Due to the previous defeats of Chinese singers by Western singers, resulting in Western singers dominating “Singer,” the show enlisted the powerhouse vocalist Sun Nan to save the day. He took to the stage to perform a song called “Save.” Through live voting by 500 audience members and 500 online international jurors, the top three spots were claimed by American singer Chante Moore, Chinese singer Sun Nan, and Canadian singer Faouzia, leaving Na Ying to fall from third place in the previous round to fifth place in this round.
Mainland netizens highly praised Sun Nan, calling him the “old treasure still shining even in his fifties,” joking that “Sun Nan’s ‘Save’ really saved the day.” However, music critics sharp-wittedly pointed out that Sun Nan played it safe with his song choice. Nevertheless, Sun Nan’s appearance quickly boosted the show’s ratings, causing a surge in the stock price of the program production company “Mango Super Media,” which gathers the top ten shareholders and top ten circulating shareholders.