American Idol: Hannah Harper Gives Update on Songwriting Struggles & New Music

Now that Hannah Harper‘s journey onAmerican Idol is done, she’s hitting the road and working on new music, but one song she’s struggling to finish is a track dedicated to her husband, Devon Mendenhall.

“That has been in the works for so long, but it just feels like words aren’t enough, if that makes sense,” Harper told Parade. “I have, like, six verses, different tunes. None of them have been finished. So I’m hoping that now that we’re out of [Idol] … because that put us to the test. We were both so exhausted mentally, physically, all the things. So it definitely needs to happen. I know that it will. It’s just one of those that I feel like I can’t even begin to scratch the surface on a love song that is ours.”

She added that her husband, whom she shares three children with, “deserves a whole catalog of songs,” which she is planning on writing.

Harper noted that she prefers writing alone until she can find a group of people to “consistently” work with on music. “If I found a couple of people that I wrote with and wrote with them long term, I think I would really enjoy it rather than, ‘We’re going to put you with these people and then over here, and then over here,’” she explained. “It’s a relationship and it’s somewhat intimate, so I want to be able to maintain the sentimental establishment of the song and how it’s written.”

She admitted that she didn’t get any songwriting done during the craziness ofAmerican Idol, as she was focused on “developing who I wanted to be as an artist” throughout the competition. Now that it’s over, though, she plans to write some music about the experience.

“There’s a lot more mama songs,” she confirmed. “I don’t know if I need to just hold on to those and do a full album one day, or like trickle them in throughout, but yeah, there’s so much to be said about the Idolexperience. But as I said, time hasn’t slowed down long enough for me to focus and even try to put it into words.”