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Profanity isn’t part of Brandon Lake’s daily vocabulary. But when a stranger used it to compliment his music at a gas station, the arena-headlining Christian singer knew it was another sign his music was reaching the right people.
“Yo, wait,” Lake recalls the man saying. “Aren’t you Brandon Lake?”
Lake smiled and nodded. The man, whom Lake described as rough around the edges, didn’t ask for a selfie, mention church, or talk about his favorite song.
He blurted: “Dude, I effing love your music, bro. I just found it!”
But he didn’t say “effing.” Lake couldn’t have been prouder.
“I love that kind of reaction because it’s real,” Lake says. “When I run into those people, they don’t give me a very churchy response. They’re just brutally honest. That makes me realize, ‘OK, this music is getting out past the four walls of the church. It’s meeting people in their everyday lives,’ and that fires me up.”
The Gospel Music Association recently celebrated Lake’s expanding reach with eight nominations for the 57th annual GMA Dove Awards. Lake, who won more Dove Awards than any other artist last year, is nominated for Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year, while “Can’t Steal My Joy” and “I Know a Name” are both up for Song of the Year.
He also earned nominations for Rock/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year for “SEVENS,” Country/Roots Recorded Song of the Year for his Lainey Wilson collaboration “The Jesus I Know Now,” Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year for King of Hearts, and Short Form Music Video of the Year (Concept) for “SEVENS.”
The GMA Dove Awards are set for Oct. 6 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
The nominations arrive as Lake prepares to release an album that continues the genre-spanning musical journey that has made him one of Nashville’s most talked-about artists.
For many Christian artists, success is measured by sold-out tours, worship anthems, awards show nominations, and popular radio singles. Lake has all of those things, but that man at the gas station represented something much bigger.
“He’s really trying to get it right,” Lake says. “He wants to be a great dad, be a great husband. Maybe he recognizes there’s a God, but he doesn’t have it all figured out. I don’t want to shove the gospel down his throat. I want to be an open door. I want the music to be an invitation.”
His philosophy helps explain why Lake’s music is reaching listeners beyond Christian radio. His most significant turning point came with “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” his 20-week No. 1 collaboration with Jelly Roll. The song became Lake’s first entry on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and introduced him to millions of listeners outside his traditional audience.
The spirit of the collaboration fit what Lake is trying to do — reach people who may believe but “aren’t running to church every Sunday,” he says.
After fans heard “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” they started digging into Lake’s other music. They found “Gratitude,” which remains a crowd favorite, and bought tickets to his King of Hearts Tour. The ripple effect surprised everyone, including Lake.
If he wondered whether country music would continue to embrace him, Cody Johnson’s response to a collaboration erased any doubt. When Lake asked Johnson to join him on “When a Cowboy Prays,” the country star said he “immediately” accepted the invitation and later told fans he was “a huge fan.”
Soon, Lake was showing up at country awards shows and industry events, where artists kept saying, “‘Dude, it’s so cool you’re going country.’”
“And I’m like, ‘Oh, am I?’” Lake recalls, laughing.
The assumption caught him off guard because he never intended to make a country record. Lake was just singing about his family and the life they were living.
Lake and his wife, Brittany, are raising their three boys on a farm, where they tend cattle, ride four-wheelers, and spend evenings walking the property. That life also felt familiar to many of Nashville’s top artists and songwriters.
Thomas Rhett, one of Lake’s closest friends, and Lake already spoke frequently about life on the road and how to be better husbands and fathers. Then other artists started reaching out. Lainey Wilson, Jordan Davis, Dan + Shay, Gary LeVox, and more soon became collaborators. Instead of asking why a Christian artist wanted to write country songs, they wanted to know when they could get to work.
Lake says his answer was simple.
“I’d love to write a Lainey Wilson song,” he remembers saying.
Rather than squeezing co-writes into multiple trips, Lake booked Dark Horse Recording in Franklin, invited some of Nashville’s most respected writers and artists, and hosted a weeklong, old-fashioned songwriting camp.
Nick Jonas was among those who showed up, using a brief break in the Jonas Brothers tour to come to Nashville. He and Lake collaborated on “The Author,” which Jonas called “one of my favorite things I’ve ever been a part of writing.”
By the end of the camp, Lake and 25 artists and songwriters had written 47 songs.
“It was honestly for the sole purpose of loving on these country artists and writers that God had allowed me to meet,” Lake says. “I hoped we’d get great songs, but more than that, I wanted to steward those friendships.”
Those sessions became the foundation for Lake’s next album. People keep asking whether it is country, Christian, or rock. Although many of the songs originated in Nashville and collaborations are central to the project, Lake won’t stamp a genre on it.
The only description that feels right, he says, is “the next Brandon Lake record.”
The collection includes songs about his wife, his children, life on the farm, and his longtime faith. Some are country, others are soaring worship anthems, and a few have a hard-rock edge.
Lake calls the collection of genres “everything that I am.”
“I hope it communicates to other people that your project doesn’t have to stay in one lane,” he says. “You can sing about your wife, then your faith, then your kids, then living a simple life. That’s all part of who I am.”
Lake remains clear about the thread connecting all of it.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that there are lost and broken people out there,” he says. “I have found my source of everything good in Christ. And man, I want everyone else to find that.”
Grab a copy of Brandon Lake's cover HERE.