Jang Haneum Wrote 'WANNA' in Two Hours — And It Shows

Not many songs can claim to have been written in two hours and sound better for it, but "WANNA" — the title track from Jang Haneum's second EP "Daydream" — is that kind of exception. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter from Jinju released the EP on March 30, 2026, and brought the track to M Countdown on April 2 for a comeback stage that reflected the song's directness: no elaborate concept, no layered production mystery. Just a voice, a clear emotional subject, and music built around both.

Jang Haneum (장한음) is not a household name in K-pop in the way that artists who come through major label systems or high-profile survival shows tend to become. He made his formal solo debut in April 2023 with "First Love," and he has spent the time since building a body of work that prioritizes songwriting and personal involvement over the polished distance that more established idol systems tend to produce. He trained at BigHit Entertainment and CUBE Entertainment before finding his current home at ES Nation — a trajectory that gave him the technical foundation of a major label trainee without locking him into a group identity that would constrain what he could say on his own.

In June 2025, he participated in Mnet's "Boys II Planet" survival show, representing ES Nation and reaching the top 18 before elimination at episode 10. The experience gave him broader public visibility without changing what he had always been doing: writing his own material, developing his own sound, working toward a solo career on his own terms.

'Daydream': An EP Made from the Inside

"Daydream" is Jang Haneum's second EP, and it carries the weight of a project that was made by someone who was fully present for every part of its creation. He contributed to all nine tracks on the EP, reportedly pulling all-nighters to complete the work — a level of personal investment that is more common in singer-songwriter contexts than in the idol production infrastructure that most K-pop acts operate within.

The EP has two title tracks: "WANNA" and "Only1." Both, according to Jang Haneum, address the experience of wanting something — chasing a dream, holding onto it, refusing to let external pressure define the boundaries of what is possible — but from different emotional angles. "WANNA" approaches that subject with directness and urgency; "Only1" offers a more reflective, slower-burning perspective. Together, they function less as competing singles and more as two sides of the same emotional coin.

The fact that "WANNA" was written in two hours is worth sitting with. In music production, the relationship between time spent and quality achieved is not linear — some of the most resonant songs are those that arrived quickly, when the emotional state that needed expressing was fully present rather than being worked toward. Jang Haneum's account of writing "WANNA" suggests exactly that kind of immediacy: a song that knew what it was from the beginning, with the rest of the process being about capturing rather than constructing.

A Path Built on Conviction

Jang Haneum's background distinguishes him from the majority of K-pop solo acts working today. He began his public life as a child actor in 2008, appearing in television dramas from a very early age — an unusual origin for someone who has built his adult career around singing and songwriting. The transition from acting to music appears to have been driven by genuine preference rather than strategic repositioning: his stated role model is BoA, a foundational figure in K-pop's early international expansion, and his favorite singer is Mariah Carey, a reference point that signals an orientation toward vocal expressiveness and emotional range over performance spectacle.

At 21, with a debut in 2023 and a second EP in 2026, Jang Haneum is still in the early stages of building a catalog. But the rate at which he has been developing material — nine tracks on "Daydream," all with significant personal involvement — suggests an artist who is not waiting for opportunities to arrive but creating the conditions for them himself. The M Countdown performance of "WANNA" on April 2 was part of the broader promotional push that accompanies a comeback cycle; the song, however, felt like something that exists independently of the cycle that brought it to a music show stage.

What 'WANNA' Actually Is

"WANNA" is a pop ballad with a central emotional register that the title announces without ambiguity: wanting. Not as a passive state but as an active, organizing force — the wanting that makes you wake up early, that keeps you working past the point when you have reason to stop, that transforms ambition from an abstract quality into something you can feel physically. Jang Haneum's delivery sits close to the song's emotional core rather than hovering above it, which gives the track the quality of a confession rather than a performance.

The song's brisk composition — two hours from concept to draft — is audible in the result, not as a shortcut but as an advantage. Songs that are worked too long can lose the specific emotional temperature that made them worth writing in the first place. "WANNA" retains that temperature. It is direct without being simple, and emotional without being sentimental — the difference between a song that tells you how to feel and one that creates the conditions where you feel it on your own.

At M Countdown on April 2, the performance translated the song's emotional content into a stage setting that prioritized the vocal performance over visual spectacle — a choice that suits the material. The M Countdown episode that week was one of the most stacked lineups of the spring, featuring comeback stages from IRENE, Kep1er, and Baby DONT Cry alongside Jang Haneum's performance and a sixth-win celebration for BTS's "SWIM." Within that context, "WANNA" offered something quieter and more interior than most of what surrounded it.

The Road From Here

ES Nation has not announced extended promotional plans beyond the current "Daydream" cycle. For Jang Haneum, who writes his own material and has demonstrated a clear ability to generate output at pace, the next release is probably already being written. "Boys II Planet" gave him visibility; "Daydream" gives him something more durable: a body of work that reflects who he actually is.

The K-pop landscape has room for more than one kind of artist, and Jang Haneum represents a category that tends to build its audience more slowly but more stably: the singer-songwriter whose catalog rewards the kind of listener who stays. "WANNA" — written in two hours, refined over the weeks that followed, performed on national television on April 2, 2026 — is the kind of song that finds that listener and keeps them. That is not nothing. In fact, for someone still in the early years of a career he is building himself, it is quite a lot.