Benjamin William Hastings talks “Gratitude,” hard work and the moment he knew Brandon Lake would be ‘the biggest thing in Christian music’
Benjamin William Hastings wasn’t supposed to be in the co-write for “Gratitude.” Hastings’ friend, Ben Fielding — best known for songs like “Who You Say I Am” and GRAMMY®-winning single “What A Beautiful Name” — was originally scheduled to write with a then unknown artist named Brandon Lake. But when a last-minute conflict arose on Fielding’s calendar, he called on Hastings to take his place.
Once he agreed to the write, Hastings admits to researching Lake, but his findings uncovered little more than a song he had written for Tasha Cobbs Leonard called “This Is A Move.” “At that point, it was very early on in his career,” Hastings says, “and I actually don’t think he’d written anything that had been on that kind of scale before.”
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Lake, a worship leader at Charleston’s Seacoast Church, arrived at Hastings’ tiny apartment in Sydney, Australia, straight from America. That day, with a view that overlooked Sydney’s iconic opera house, they started what would become Lake’s massive breakthrough hit, “Gratitude.”
“The moment I met him, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this guy’s got something really special,’” Hastings shares. “I called Fielding that night and said, ‘Hey, give it three years, and that guy’s the biggest thing in Christian music.’
“The next morning, I remember praying, actually,” Hastings continues. “I was like, ‘God, help us find something today that’s going to help [Brandon] step into everything he’s meant to do.’ And then, that day, we finished ‘Gratitude.’ When we wrote it, it was probably one of the few times where I’ve been a part of a song and been like, ‘Oh, I think this is really special, and I think, church-wise, this will have a reach.’”
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As the story goes, Lake went through numerous iterations of the song — even a take that included a vocal from Hastings — but he could never land on a version that completely satisfied him. It wasn’t until he completely stripped it down to a bare-bones guitar-vocal that it became an 11th hour addition to his full-length debut, “House of Miracles.”
Basically an acoustic deep cut, “Gratitude” was released to radio late in the album cycle. However, Lake’s previous high-profile collaborations teed it up to surpass even its writers’ expectations.
“If it had been up to me, I would’ve said, ‘Hey, there’s your single. Go out with this first. This is the song.’ And it wouldn’t have worked,” Hastings observes of the time that lapsed between when “Gratitude” was born and when it came to global attention. “I think that’s the beauty of how God works. That song’s been able to have the reach it has because, in the meantime, Brandon went and wrote a gazillion incredible songs with a bunch of people and sang on all the Elevation Worship stuff, the Maverick City Music stuff, and all these things. So, it was almost like at the end of that, people were like, ‘Well, what else you got?’ And it’s like he just pulled ‘Gratitude’ out of his back pocket with, ‘Actually, I’ve had this the whole time.’ His core fans had already heard it, but when it was really put out in front of the masses, he then had the rapport.”
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Ironically, Hastings currently finds himself in a similar position. Over the past decade, he’s slowly been earning the trust of Christian music listeners one song at a time. They’re just now equating the long-haired former UNITED member with many of the songs they’ve been singing in their churches and cars. In the past 10 years, the Irish-born artist has not only co-written “Gratitude” — one of the genre’s biggest success stories of late — he’s also co-penned UNITED’s “So Will I (100 Billion X),” Cody Carnes’ “Take You At Your Word,” Cory Asbury’s “The Father’s House” and Lake and Phil Wickham’s most recent collaboration, “Love of God,” among many others.
Over the course of the past three years, Hastings has been pounding the pavement nearly nonstop, touring with his co-writers-turned-best-friends like Lake, Wickham and Carnes and releasing his debut LP as a solo artist.
From the beginning, Hastings has never been the typical Christian artist. Although selections like “That’s The Thing About Praise (feat. Blessing Offor)” and “Abandoned (feat. Brandon Lake)” have found their place at radio, much of Hastings’ faire is a deep well of thought-provoking, convicting poetry that requires more time and contemplation than your average pop song. Not only that, but his first project as a solo artist boasted 25 songs and more than an hour’s worth of music, while a deluxe edition of his self-titled effort served up an ambitious tracklisting comprised of 39 tracks. To say Hastings is prolific is an understatement.
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“It was less because I was trying to just do something and more because I had all these songs I knew didn’t fit anywhere else and made sense if they came from me. So I really started it to service that,” Hastings explains of his transition to solo artistry. “I feel like the reason was already there. So then it was just a matter of putting it out and being like, ‘OK, well, do people care about this? And if they don’t, that’s fine; I’ll probably do it anyway.’”
Songwriting is really the only thing Hastings has ever known. Growing up, he attended a Salvation Army church in Belfast, Ireland, where his father wrote music, led the choir and played in the brass band. Meanwhile, his mother directed the children’s choir. “I grew up around Dad writing, so I just thought writing songs was something you did,” Hastings reflects.
Hastings left his homeland of Ireland when he was 19, and after 10 years in Australia, he made the move to Los Angeles, where he’s spent the past three years. Together with his wife and two young children, the singer/songwriter just recently settled in Nashville, which will afford him more time at home as his itinerary becomes increasingly full.
“For the last three years, it’s been a lot of work. We’ve worked really hard as a team,” Hastings says. “Being in UNITED has been amazing and the biggest blessing, but it doesn’t always necessarily translate. It’s not like just because you do something over here, now all those people are going to want to come over and care and listen. Now, it’s just about trying to get in front of the people who would want to hear it.”
That’s exactly what he’s been doing — attempting to suss out an audience for his pensive pop musings. Hastings just completed a run of European tour dates with Lauren Daigle. While he was in the U.K., he also had the opportunity to play his first headlining show back in Belfast. He’s rolled out a limited-series podcast with friend and fellow songwriter Aodhan King. Additionally, the multi-instrumentalist has also been writing for his sophomore album, set to arrive later this year. “I would tell you the name, but it doesn’t have one,” he says of the new project during a sit-down interview at the Air1 Studios. “We’re wrestling with that right now.”
Recent releases like “Abandoned,” “Set Me On Fire” and “What A Friend” are expected to be included on the forthcoming collection.
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He actually recorded “Abandoned” after something of a trade deal with Lake. The two men had written a couple songs together, and originally “Abandoned” landed squarely in Lake’s camp, with the chart-topping artist set to record it for his “Coat of Many Colors” LP. But when he called Hastings asking if he could cut another song they’d crafted called “More,” Hastings used the opportunity to strike a bargain. “I’ll give you ‘More’ if you give me ‘Abandoned,’” he bartered. The two friends agreed and then ended up singing on one another’s records.
They’ll have the chance to share both cuts live when they reunite for the “Tear Off The Roof Tour” this fall. Moreover, Hastings will preview new music with his own headlining shows in Nashville, New York and Los Angeles in October and November.
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Whether he stewards a song himself or he sits back and watches one of his friends carry a track he’s written around the world, at the end of the day, Hastings is simply happy when a good song finds a home. “You know, you work really hard for a long time to try and find those songs. They don’t come easy,” he confesses. “So when you find them, it’d be such a shame to just let them die. If I’m a part of writing a song that I feel could really help the Church, and it’s a song that deserves to get out, but there’s no place for it, then I now have a way to put it out into the world.”
And if his solo career doesn’t pan out, Hastings clearly has a knack for scouting new talent. Given that his predictions about Lake were spot on, he might just have a future in A&R.
