The Second Batch of New Hymns!

On September 12th, 2025, the church released the second batch of new hymns. In a previous post, I covered in detail as much as I could about the first batch of hymns and how they rolled out between June 2 and September 8th. This page covers period between when the second batch came out and when the third batch came out on Febrary 13, 2025. Currently I have data from 8,726 sacrament meetings from 1,409 wards from this range.

But first, here’s how much data I have for each week, just so you have an idea of what I’m working with.

Number of wards I have data from, by week
Since September 15th
date	wards
September 15	234
September 22	262
September 29	239
October 13	231
October 20	244
October 27	216
November 03	298
November 10	250
November 17	253
November 24	269
December 01	349
December 08	663
December 15	435
December 22	364
December 29	635
January 05	660
January 12	611
January 19	623
January 26	597
February 02	678
February 09	615

How many wards sang new hymns each week?

This plot shows what percentage of wards sing new hymns each week. For context, includes all the data since June 2nd when the first batch came out so we can see how the roll-out of the second batch compares to that of the first batch. I’ve color-coded it by batch: green is for the first batch, red/pink is for the second, and blue is for both combined. This division is only relevant beginning on September 15th when the second batch came out so prior to then, only the blue lines are used. In all cases, a lighter color indicates wards that sang exactly one new hymn while a darker color is for wards that since two or more in a single meeting.

With the first batch of hymns, the reception was very warm. Pretty consistently over the 15 weeks after the first batch of hymns was released, we saw about 30% of wards singing at least one of the new ones, with a small percentage singing two or more.

Since the introduction of the second batch, I thought it’d be helpful to split it up into various colors. The green ones represent the number of wards singing hymns from the first batch (#1001–1009), with the lighter color for just one and the darker color for two in a meeting. The red/pink dots represent the second batch of hymns.

In the first week after the release of the second batch, relatively few wards (around 8%) sang any of them. Meanwhile, the first batch continued as normal. This is about a quarter as many wards as what we saw with the first batch. However, the following Sunday, September 22nd, about 16% of wards sang from the second batch, which is about twice as much as the previous Sunday. This is represented by the pink and red lines going up in the plot. After General Conference and until the holiday season, more wards sang from the second batch than the first batch, which is in stark contrast to the lukewarm reception they initially got.

What is perhaps more interesting though is not which batch people sang from, but whether they sang any new hymns at all. Look at the blue lines. Those represent the number of wards singing new hymns total, across both batches. They went up through September and October. To accompany that, the gray line, which represents the number of wards that sang none of the new hymns, goes down. On October 20th, around 40% of the wards I have data from sang at least one of the new hymns! It stabilized around 30%–40% until through mid-November.

Once we hit the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, there was a dip in the number of new hymns being sung. It started on November 24th when most wards sang hymns of gratitude because of Thanksgiving. (Keep in mind that most of my data comes from the United States. On December 1st, there were even fewer new hymns being sung as people transitioned to singing Christmas hymns. Most notably though, while hymns from the second batch are not sung very much, the first batch was steady. This is because many wards are now singing the new Christmas hymns, particularly, He Is Born, the Divine Christ Child (#1202) and What Child Is This? (#1203). (I have a dedicated post on the 2024 Christmas season.)

Since Christmas, the number of wards singing new hymns has returned to its pre-Thanksgiving numbers. However, the second batch never quite got back to where it was in the first two months after it came out.

What hymns are most popular?

The following table shows the hymns from the second batch in order of how popular they are. On the right, I have an approximation of how many wards have sung that hymn since its release.

Approximate percentage of wards new hymns have been sung in
Since September 15
Hymn	percent of wards
Amazing Grace (1010)	60.9%
Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands (1016)	37.7%
My Shepherd Will Supply My Need (1014)	34.7%
God's Gracious Love (1013)	26.9%
This Is the Christ (1017)	25.2%
Come, Lord Jesus (1018)	21.0%
Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus (1015)	20.3%
Holding Hands Around the World (1011)	13.7%
Anytime, Anywhere (1012)	11.1%

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazing Grace (#1010) was far and away the most popular in this batch. Next was Behold the Wounds in Jesus’ Hands (#1016) and My Shepherd Will Supply My Need (#1014). The least popular hymn from this batch was Anytime, Anywhere (#1012), which was only sung by about 10% of wards during this time. Personally, I hoped that Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus (#1015) would be more popular than it was (it’s one of my favorites from this batch).

(For a complete version of this table that includes all hymns, see here.)

What hymns are most popular each week?

Now that we’re several weeks past the release, we can start to see a glimpse of how the adoption of these new hymns has ebbed and flowed and how each hymn has been introduced. The figure below shows what proportion of wards sang what hymns each week, given that they sang a new hymn that week. So, we’re only focused on wards that have used these hymns.

So, Amazing Grace (#1010) had a pretty interesting distribution. It started off strong—people are generally familiar with it and were excited to sing it when it first came out. As the weeks progressed, fewer wards sang it, either because they had already done so or because the novelty had worn off. This is similar to what we saw with Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (#1001), though in a less extreme way. After Christmas, it had a resurgence in popularity and I think many wards sang it a second time.

Come, Lord Jesus (#1018) basically had an opposite pattern. Though it wasn’t listed in the holiday section of the new hymnal, it has become a new Christmas hymn. Outside of December, it was relatively unpopular, but during December it was far and the away the most common hymn from this batch.

The rest of the hymns roughly show the same general pattern. They started off with varying degrees of popularity. Over the next two months, they all got slightly more popular—presumably coinciding with the fall of So, Amazing Grace (#1010). Then they dipped again during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since the New Year, they again have varying degrees of popularity, with those numbers mostly going up over the next six weeks (mirroring what happened between September and November).

When during meetings are these hymns sung?

We can see when these hymns tend to be sung and get an overall look at the popularity of the second batch of hymns. Again, it’s based on so little data, so take these results with a grain of salt.

When were new hymns sung in sacrament meeting?
Since September 15
New Hymn	Opening	Sacrament	Intermediate	Closing
Amazing Grace (1010)	44%	3%	20%	33%
Holding Hands Around the World (1011)	44%	2%	26%	28%
Anytime, Anywhere (1012)	22%	0%	36%	42%
God's Gracious Love (1013)	29%	1%	34%	37%
My Shepherd Will Supply My Need (1014)	33%	1%	27%	39%
Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus (1015)	29%	5%	40%	27%
Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands (1016)	5%	88%	4%	3%
This Is the Christ (1017)	30%	21%	15%	34%
Come, Lord Jesus (1018)	49%	3%	28%	20%
Note: Each row adds up to 100%.

What I see here is about three different patterns. Most hymns are of the first pattern: they’re typically not sacrament hymns and are roughly equally likely to be sung as opening, intermediate, or closing hymns. There is a little bit of variation among them, for example, Holding Hands Around the World (#1011) was a little more common as an opening hymn, Oh, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus (#1015) was a little more common as an intermediate hymn, and Anytime, Anywhere (#1012) was a little more common as a closing hymn.

The second type of hymn is the one that was overwhelmingly sung as a sacrament hymn. In this batch Behold the Wounds in Jesus’ Hands (#1016) is of this type. 88% of the time it was sung, it was done so as a sacrament hymn. It was still very occasionally sung elsewhere in the meeting, but not too often.

Finally, we have This Is the Christ (#1017) whih was more or less equally likely to be sung anywhere in the meeting, including as a sacrament hymn. If we lump the opening, intermediate, and closing hymn frequencies together, then yes, it’s most likely going to not be a sacrament hymn, but it’s interesting still that it’s still sung a fair amount as a sacrament hymn.

Conclusion

With this second batch of hymns, there were some pretty interesting patterns. First, Amazing Grace (#1010) stole the show and was the most popular of this batch. It took this batch a few weeks to really get into the swing of things, but at its peak about 40% of wards sang at least one hymn. Unlike the first batch, this one was pushed aside by the end-of-year holidays, so for about six weeks, it wasn’t drawn from very much in sacrament meeting. But that made the timing even more interesting because in its second wave, the same kind of patterns were found as what I saw in the first wave.

Now that we have a third batch of hymns, I’m curious to see how this one will continue to be incorporated into sacrament meetings.