American Idol Season 24 winner Hannah Harper has a confession: winning the show did not make the songs come any easier.
In a recent interview with Parade, the 25-year-old Missouri mom of three got candid about what her creative life looks like now that the competition is over - and the honest answer is that the hardest song she has ever tried to write is still unfinished.
It is a love song for her husband, Devon Mendenhall. And she has been working on it for years.
"That has been in the works for so long, but it just feels like words aren't enough," Harper told Parade. "I have, like, six verses, different tunes. None of them have been finished." She added that Devon simply deserves a whole catalog of songs - but the love she has for him is too big to fit into any single one.
That same authenticity is what shaped her approach to writing throughout Idol. Harper admitted she did not get any songwriting done during the competition, saying she was focused on "developing who I wanted to be as an artist" rather than writing new material.
She also opened up about why co-writing does not come naturally to her. "I want to write songs that are sentimental and mean a lot to me, so maybe writing alone is what I prefer unless it's with a group of people that I write with consistently," she said. For Harper, songwriting is intimate - not a speed-dating exercise with strangers in a Nashville writing room.
As for what comes next, fans have plenty to look forward to. "There's a lot more mama songs," she confirmed, adding that the Idol experience itself has given her plenty to say - she just needs time to sit down and say it. A full-length version of "Married Into This Town" is also on the way, with Harper noting the version heard on the show was cut to just over a minute and she plans to release the complete track.
For a woman whose entire career launched from a song she wrote alone in the middle of the exhausting, beautiful chaos of motherhood, none of this is surprising. "String Cheese" was never about performing - it was about telling the truth. That standard has not changed. The love song for Devon will get finished when the words are finally worthy of him. Until then, six verses and counting.
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