Number of wards I have data from, by week | |
---|---|
Since September 21, 2025 | |
date | wards |
September 21 | 433 |
September 28 | 525 |
The Fifth Batch of New Hymns!
On September 18, 2025, the church released the fifth batch of new hymns, which features another African American spiritual, a hymn written by a Tongan saint, and lyrics written by President Nelson. In previous posts, I have covered in detail the first, second, third, and fourth batches of hymns and how they were incorporated into sacrament meetings. This page covers period since when the fifth batch came out and will update weekly as more data comes in.
Currently I have data from 958 sacrament meetings from 696 wards since September 21, 2025. Here’s how much data I have for each week so far, just so you have an idea of what I’m working with.
How many wards sang new hymns each week?
The following plot show what percentage of wards sang from each of the new batches of hymns, per week, since June 2024 when the new hymns started getting rolled out. I’ve included data from all batches just so you can compare them to each other. There’s not a lot to see quite yet because it’s only been one week, but the fact that that orange dot is so low means it’s doing worse than the first and second batches.
Specifically, just three wards of the 361 that I have data from sang from the fifth batch. The hymns they sang were
Here’s another version of the same plot but instead of the actual dates, it’s in terms of how many weeks since the batches came out. This version of the plot is useful to spot any parallel trends across the batches, especially in the first few weeks of their release.
What stands out is that it seems like more people sang from the fifth batch on its first week than the fourth batch on its first week. That would be a first for a new batch to be more popular than a previous batch. We’ll see what happens in future weeks.
What hymns are most popular?
The following table shows the hymns from the fifth batch in order of how popular they are.
Approximate percentage of wards new hymns have been sung in | |
---|---|
Since June 15, 2025 | |
Hymn | percent of wards |
Our Prayer to Thee (1048) | 1.4% |
Thou Gracious Lord, Whose Mercy Lends (1042) | 0.2% |
Help Us Remember (1043) | 0.2% |
This Day Is a Good Day, Lord (1051) | 0.2% |
How Did the Savior Minister? (1044) | 0% |
Jesus Is the Way (1045) | 0% |
Can You Sount th Stars in Heaven? (1046) | 0% |
He Cares for Me (1047) | 0% |
Joseph Prayed in Faith (1049) | 0% |
Stand by Me (1050) | 0% |
Go Tell Is on the Mountain (1208) | 0% |
Little Baby in a Manger (1209) | 0% |
Conclusion
That’s all for now. It’s too soon to say anything else because so few wards have sung from the fifth batch. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next few weeks though.