Brandon Lake Talks Creating Music on His Own: 'God Wants to Do Something Unique Through My Life' (Exclusive) (2024)

During a week when tensions were high and the world seemed to be falling apart, Christian artist Brandon Lake welcomed a group of songwriters to his home in Charleston, South Carolina to write some songs.

"I found myself singing about heaven,” Lake, 33, tells PEOPLE quietly. "The emotions were just building up and building up, and then we just wrote this song about our final destination, which is heaven.”

It was a song that the five-time Grammy winner says freed up his soul a bit as the violence overseas continued to play out thousands of miles away.

“I'm not someone to ever watch the news, but the past few days, I have probably had the TV on or my phone on nonstop,” he reflects. “Writing a song about heaven and how God is still holy and sovereign was just the medicine my heart needed.”

This sort of medicine was also the medicine that pumped through the veins of Lake as the artist created his third studio solo album Coat of Many Colors.

“Once you've spent months and months on a record, it's hard to go back and listen to your own songs,” admits Lake — who has collaborated through the years with the likes of Elevation Worship and Maverick City Music —with a laugh. “I'm kind of waiting to see how what God gave me a few months ago will now end up being very timely for what the world is facing right now.”

But as much as he created this new album for others, he also created it for himself.

“I end the record with a song called ‘Country Psalm,’” says Lake, referring to the powerful song he co-wrote alongside Emily Weisband, Micah Nichols and Tom Douglas. “I wanted to write a modern-day psalm that says, ‘Praise the Lord, I've got so much to be grateful for, but in the context of what I'm experiencing.’ I feel like too many people are making records full of singles trying to make it on the radio. And when your goal is mass consumption, you lose sight of ‘The One.’”

But make no mistake — seeing his name solely listed on any album is enough to make even the most faithful a tad nervous.

“Really, this is my solo record, but it is filled with collaboration,” says Lake, who is currently out on his headlining Coat of Many Colors Tour. “I've written many of these songs with my friends and with my community and with people across the world. It doesn't take me partnering with a main ministry to be successful. God wants to do something unique through my life, and I'm trying to learn how to trust that. I am stepping out in faith to believe that the music that Brandon Lake puts out can make as big of an impact as a ministry that has a church's name behind it or a collective of 12, 15 or 20 artists.”

Kicked off by the massive success of the album’s first single “Praise You Anywhere,” Lake says Coat of Many Colors also gave him the freedom to explore a wide range of genres, hinting that there is more where that came from.

“You're going to hear R&B on this record, you're going to hear country on this record, you're going to hear rock and roll on this record, you're going hear pop on this record,” he says. “You're going to hear beautiful notes and then you are going to hear me screaming my head off." He laughs. "I think some people are called to one sound, and I just haven't found that that's my story.”

Lake’s story also currently includes some other very important characters such as his wife Brittany, their three children, their three dogs, "a few cats," and a squirrel.

“We have rehabilitated this squirrel and we're about to release it back out into the wild,” Lake explains. “But yeah, literally there is a squirrel running around, dogs chasing it, kids going wild. It is chaos at all times around here, but it’s the most beautiful chaos. The chaos to me just screams that we're alive.”