During a new conversation with CBS Mornings, Brandon Lake has expressed his gratitude towards the country community for embracing him as he makes his foray into the genre.

The ‘Praise’ hitmaker credits artists such as Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson and Cody Johnson for “sticking their neck out” and recording genre-blurring collaborations with him.

Lake underlines that he's tired of feeling as though Contemporary Christian Music has to stick to the confines of one sound, “I don't think it should be in a lane. I think if God made all the colours, all the sounds - why would his kids not play with all of it?”

He goes on, “I think worship Christian music can be Rock n’ Roll, I think it could be one guy singing with a ukulele. It's really about the message, isn't it? So I think “Christian music”...should be infiltrating every genre. I understand that it's a label, it's a genre because people want to find it, but I don't like that it's become segregated to, ‘Oh, if it has a Christian message, put it in the Christian bucket. It can't go in Country, it can't go in Rock n’ Roll...It has to be on that station”...I'm here to hopefully ruin that”, adding playfully, “I've got a little bit of fire behind me on that”.

Lake then pays tribute to the country artists that have shown support to his genre-bending mission, “I want the message to get out to as many people as possible, and I'm thankful for guys like Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Lainey Wilson, who are all sticking their neck out there for me and going, ‘I love this dude, let's do a song together’”.

As for why he thinks country and Christian music are such great bedfellows, the ‘Gratitude’ singer-songwriter reflects, “I think the values are the same, or very similar. Faith, family, freedom. To put it simply”, concluding, “I think God's about all those things”.

After joining forces with Jelly, Lainey and Cody, along with the likes of Bailey Zimmerman and Gabby Barrett, Lake continues to tease forthcoming collaborations with Dan + Shay, Thomas Rhett, HARDY, Russell Dickerson and Tyler Hubbard.

We spoke to Russell back in March about his rumoured Lake collaborations, and he confirmed to Holler that - excitingly - they're playing around with three songs at the moment.

As we outlined in our recent deep-dive on the connection between country music and Contemporary Christian Music, the two have been enjoying an increasingly symbiotic relationship of late, with numerous crossover anthems being released by artists like Forrest Frank and Thomas Rhett, Josiah Queen and Avery Anna and more.

As Lake muses in his CBS Mornings interview, there are clear overlaps between the two, with numerous country songs exploring faith and Christianity, albeit in a less signposted way.

So in that sense, at least, country music has for decades been overcoming this issue that Lake cites, where “Christian music” is cast aside and mislabelled. Country music does this through subtly spiritual hits, epitomised by ‘Where I Find God’ by Larry Fleet, ‘I Saw God Today’ by George Strait, ‘Speaking Terms’ by Ella Langley and more.

As a result, it makes a lot of sense for Lake to be exploring a crossover moment with country music. Judging by the rousing, uplifting earworms he's been producing in the space so far, we're hoping he has a full-blown country-leaning album in the works.