Singled Out: America's Got Talent Champ Brandon Leake's Fear

09-23-2026

America's Got Talent winner Brandon Leake recently released his new album "Intimacy" and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the track "Fear". Here is the story:

"Fear" came from a season of my life when faith stopped being something I could simply talk about and became something I had to wrestle with in real time. I experienced an unexpected panic attack, my daughter was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, there was financial instability, and I found myself carrying questions about God that I didn't necessarily have answers for. I had spent so much of my life speaking about faith, hope and purpose, but suddenly I was in a place where I had to ask myself what those things actually looked like when life didn't make sense.

We're often taught to think of fear and faith as opposites, that if you have enough faith, somehow you shouldn't be afraid. "Fear" challenges that idea. I started to understand that experiencing fear doesn't mean faith is absent. Sometimes faith is choosing to keep moving while fear is right there beside you. For me, there was something freeing about being able to acknowledge, "Yes, I'm scared. Yes, I have questions. And yes, I still believe." I didn't want to create something that gave people an easy answer. I wanted to be honest about what it feels like to believe when certainty isn't available to you.

That honesty became a huge part of the creative process behind Intimacy. Working alongside longtime collaborator Fariss Ryan, Emmy Award-winning composer John Wineglass, and Teak Underdue, we wanted the music and spoken word to have room to exist together without one overpowering the other. The project was ultimately mixed by Derek Minor, and throughout the process, the goal was never to make these emotions feel cleaner or easier than they actually were. We wanted people to be able to sit inside them.

"Fear" became an emotional centerpiece of the album because so many of the other things I explore on Intimacy-fatherhood, grief, anxiety, faith, healing and uncertainty, eventually come back to that same question: What do you do when you don't know what happens next? Becoming a father changed the weight of that question for me. There are things I would gladly carry myself that become much harder when they involve someone I love, especially my child.

I think intimacy requires honesty, and sometimes honesty means admitting that you're afraid. It means admitting that you don't understand why something is happening or where God is in the middle of it. Intimacy isn't about me arriving at a place where I suddenly have all the answers. It's about learning that faith can still exist in the questions.

That's what I hope people take away from "Fear." You don't have to wait until the fear disappears to keep moving forward. Sometimes the moments when we feel the least certain are the very moments when we discover what our faith actually means.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here