“He said he’d send me a CD with some of his song ideas. “We got together, we had a coffee, nothing particularly eventful happened,” Townend recalled. In a 2016 interview recounting the origins of “In Christ Alone,” Townend said there was nothing memorable about his meeting with Getty. The song also launched a new era of modern hymn writing.Īll of which came as a surprise to the tune’s authors. That melody became the basis for “In Christ Alone,” which was released in 2001 and has become one of the most popular songs in Protestant churches, according to the Christian Copyright Licensing International, which tracks songs sung in churches. So he sent a recording of the melody on a CD to Stuart Townend, an English songwriter he’d met a few months earlier at a church conference, in hopes Townend might be able to turn the melody into a serviceable hymn. This isn’t great, he thought at the time.īut it was the best he could come up with. Concluding with a nod to what it yet to come, Sandra McCracken notes, “Anchor Hymns is a special collaboration I love seeing this diverse community of musicians come together around a desire to write and celebrate hymns of the faith.(RNS) - The melody that changed Keith Getty’s life was first scratched out on the back of an electric bill in a humble flat in Northern Ireland. The heart behind Anchor Hymns being to create songs of substance from both a lyrical, theological, and musical frame shines through their second release.

Commenting on the arrangement of the new single that includes an improvised musical section, Sandra McCracken hopes that, “our interpretation of this hymn will help to be able to be sung in more churches, even with simple instrumentation.” ‘In Christ Alone’ has been a pillar in the Church’s song book and Anchor Hymns hope to continue the trend, as Antoine says that it “echoes the goodness of God in the face of Jesus Christ… it’s in Him alone that lasting fulfilment and eternal hope are found.”

This Anchor Hymns version of ‘In Christ Alone’ features established artist and liturgist Sandra McCracken as well as singer-songwriter Antoine Bradford, whose voices blend beautifully on a warm and blues-y soundscape. Written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, this song has spread far and wide within the global church as it tells the good news of Jesus Christ so richly and succinctly: “from life’s first cry, to final breath.” Starting with reaching into the past, the initial releases will cover some of Integrity’s most iconic songs and reframe them in a modern and musical way now taking on one of the most enduring hymns of recent years as their second single, ‘In Christ Alone’. Anchor Hymns is the latest Integrity Music multi-artist project which was unveiled last month with a debut single.

In christ alone