Magic Man is the second studio album by Hong Kong singer and rapper Jackson Wang. It was released on September 9, 2022, through Team Wang Records, 88rising and Warner Records. Debuting at number 5 in South Korea and number 15 in the United States, the album received positive reviews from critics, who complimented Wang's vocal experimentation and new sound.
Background
Preparations for Wang's second full-length studio album began in spring 2020 with the aim of publishing it by the end of the year. Between 2020 and 2021, the singer experienced a mental breakdown, during which he began to feel lost, didn't know who he was and what he was doing, and thought he was not good enough or not working hard enough. After a year and a half, he started overcoming it by confiding his problems to friends for the first time, and the feeling of rebirth led him to decide to leave behind his former self, as a person and artist, and start over, wanting to show the public a more honest side of himself, whether good or bad. The release of the album was moved to August 2021, then in the autumn of the same year, and further postponed after deciding to delete and re-do eight songs. It was finally announced on July 29 for September 9, 2022, along with the tracklist.
Wang's burnout is the inspiration for most of the album, which is about embarking on a journey of exploration and research of the new self, introducing Jackson Wang's present persona. The title was announced in the final credits of the music video for "Drive You Home", a single released on July 29, 2021, accompanied by the subtitle "The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be." On April 26, 2022, the last song on the album was replaced and created; the singer decided the entire direction of the record, as well as writing the lyrics and composing every track. The recording sessions for each song lasted an hour and a half, during which Wang followed his instinct, without aiming for perfection and caring too much about the technical part; instead, he concentrated on delivering the lyrics.
Composition
In the making of Magic Man, Wang was inspired, among others, by Inception and by not wanting to give a definite interpretation of art, leaving everyone the opportunity to make their own theories, and by the rawness of Prince, whose red corvette from "Little Red Corvette" appears in the lyrics of "Drive it You Like You Stole it"; the performances are instead inspired by modern art and contemporary dance.
Magic Man explores three different people in the process of analyzing and accepting his own emotions: the first is identified by the element of fire and the color red, a symbol of temptation and madness; the second is identified by water and the blue color, and represents a world of ice in which you found calm; the third and final person is identified by the color grey, and represents void, solitude and silence. In an interview with Rolling Stone India, Wang compared the record to the journey that took him from almost going crazy to use that energy to become the ultimate version of himself.
The first person was presented on March 31, 2022, with the release of "Blow", the opening song of the album. The track is reminiscent of 90s rock and balances analog and digital sounds, as well as combining hard percussion sounds and distorted guitar riffs in the chorus, creating a drunken-trance-like atmosphere. The sonic intensity is matched with a raspy-almost-gruff vocalization. "Blow" speaks of a forbidden love, "fleeting-yet-heated", in which the singer is drawn in by a stranger woman's magnetism, regardless of the danger. The music video, directed by Daniel Cloud Campos and released on the same day, has a steampunk vibe, with corsets and puff sleeves, which was compared to Dorian Gray and Bridgerton: Wang and a group of party-goers, passed out on the floor, inhale an unknown smoke-like substance and, when they regain consciousness, start dancing in a state of trance.
Magic Man's second track, "Cruel", was performed for the first time at Coachella on April 16, 2022 and published as a single the following July 29. At the press conference, Wang said that the song's grunge and the raw sound was "the perfect representation of the distorted and warped story that I am trying to unfold. It is the opus to a wild yet beautiful symphony," and stated that it had set the direction of the record in terms of narrative and sound. The track is about an electrifying relationship, reinforcing the addiction sung in "Blow".