How This Song Launched Brandon Lake’s Music Career

Published: February 13, 2024

How This Song Launched Brandon Lake’s Music Career: ‘Still Surprising’

By Movieguide® Contributor

Grammy award-winning artist Brandon Lake opened up with the Rock Church about finding fame during the pandemic with his hit song, “Graves Into Gardens.”

“I think that I am still catching up to when people come up to me and they’re like, ‘Man, your music has changed my life.’ Like it feels like every single time is just still surprising to me,” he began.

“I grew up in the church. My dad’s a pastor,” Lake said of his childhood. “I grew up in a church plant in dirty Myrtle, Myrtle Beach, and we planted a church. I’ve just always been a part of the church, and so when I fell in love with songwriting, it was just always for the church, and I’m still a local church guy, and so for any of the stuff that’s branched outside my local church, it’s just blown my mind.”

“But the ‘Graves Into Gardens’ kind of happened through my passion for songwriting,” he added. “I’d been going to Atlanta a ton, writing songs with this group of people that would later become Maverick City. That led to me talking about a songwriting deal with Bethel Music. Wrote with them, and then they were like, ‘Hold on. We think there’s more here.’ So, they invited me to be an artist with them on their Collective.”

There, he met Elevation Worship’s Chris Brown.

“Chris came out to lead at one of our conferences and we hit it off,” Lake recalled. “I was like, ‘Hey. I’m down the road if y’all ever want to write let’s do it.’ Two weeks later he hits me up he’s like, ‘Pastor Steven wants to write.’ I drive up there. I’m shaking in my boots. I’m terrified, you know, like this is one of the biggest opportunities of my lifetime. In those two days we wrote five songs that went on that record. And ‘Graves Into Gardens’ was probably I think the second song we wrote. So, I didn’t foresee any of this happening.”

“‘Graves Into Gardens’ is a testimony song to the power and authority of our God. It’s a song that very confidently declares how faithful He is to each of us,” Lead Worship Well wrote. “He’s the only one that can turn our mourning into dancing. Give us beauty in exchange for ashes.”

Since becoming a leading figure in the Christian music industry, Lake continues to point his listeners to God.

“I pray these songs give you something to scream to when you’re feeling crazy, sit to when you long for His whisper, and sing to when you’re feeling grateful for His never failing rescue. I have found that ‘help’ is a hard word to say, but powerful to pray,” he said of his album “HELP!”

Movieguide® previously reported on Lake’s success:

Brandon Lake is celebrating an impressive twentieth straight week atop Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart with single “Gratitude.”

“The song, which first reached the Hot Christian Songs apex on the ranking dated Feb. 4, 2023, becomes one of only eight hits to have reigned for at least 20 weeks since the list launched in June 2003 — and the first by a male soloist,” K-Jewel reported. 

Part of the song’s success is thanks to its inclusion in 2021’s CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHOSEN: THE MESSENGERS.

“‘Gratitude’ just went to the top of the charts,” Lake told Faithwire. “And God has just been breathing on it ever since, and I get to tour this song and sing it with thousands of people and it’s just really cool that ‘The Chosen’ had such a huge part to play in really just one of the main worship songs that the nation is singing now.”

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