The 11 tracks on Hong Kong-born artist Jackson Wang’s album MAGICMAN 2 started as diary entries. “After 10 years of non-stop schedules, all packed every day of the year, I figured I needed some rest,” Wang tells Apple Music, referring to his first decade of work in the massively successful K-pop group GOT7. In stark contrast, Wang spent the lead-up to production on the 2025 album with family and getting introspective: “I took almost a year off just for myself to breathe and to think about what does everything mean.” The album is a follow-up to Wang’s 2022 solo album MAGIC MAN, which was a raw and dramatic alt-rock effort inspired by the artist’s experiences with burnout. MAGICMAN 2, a different kind of confession, expands the thematic scope of the man behind the pop persona. “People see Jackson Wang, my audience sees me, but how do I really feel? I didn’t even know that,” says Wang. “This album is all about how I feel in everything—in reality, in society, in industry.” MAGICMAN 2 is divided into four chapters, meant to take the listener on an emotional journey through “manic highs”, “losing control”, “realisation” and “acceptance”, explains Wang. The album gets personal in its subject matter, prioritising vulnerable specificities over vague universalities. Early on, in the haunting, dramatic synth-pop track “High Alone”, Wang makes a desperate plea to an ex-lover. In “BUCK”, featuring Indian superstar Diljit Dosanjh, he celebrates the infinite groove of the dance floor. Wang finishes the album with the acoustic pop track “Made Me a Man”, which he calls his favourite on the album, a song he did not intend to be a commercial hit as much as an honest statement. “I felt like I needed one of those albums in my life that represents me,” he says. “Not thinking about, ‘Oh, is this going to be an ear candy song?’ I want something that represents me.” For an album whose sonic spectrum spans ornate, effects-shaped vocals, massive subs and intimate voice note samples, designing the listening experience was a meticulous process. “To express such a personal body of work through sound, I had to dig into exact moments in all those flashbacks and let the feeling of the environment lead selection of instruments,” Wang says, adding that these details are enhanced in the Spatial Audio version. “With Spatial Audio, we were able to sonically mimic the pressures that felt suffocating and overwhelming.” The artist singles out “Not For Me” as a prime example of the technology’s elevating effect. “You can feel the empty space that surrounds us in the simplicity of the musical lines and faint echo and reverb of the strings, conjuring an image of ‘floating in space’—and the feeling of listlessness and lack of grounding that comes with it,” he says. “When the sound comes in from all angles, filling up what once was sonically empty, you feel the dream come to life—and just as easily disappear when it all drops away again.” To Wang, this immersive sound ties back to MAGICMAN 2’s point of origin. “It feels like being alone in the world while everything else is happening in slow motion around you,” he says. “Exactly what it felt like while I was writing that journal.”