Pete, I don't think that the music is irrelevant, its very relevant if you are trying to sing it. You are hardly likely to take anything out of the lyrics if you are struggling to keep up with a changing tempo. Traditional hymns are written to a quite precise metre (lots of Common Metre or Long Metre hymns in hymn books). Many modern hymn writers write to this structure, some do not write music at all, they write contemporary meaningful words to existing hymn tunes. This is of course part of a long tradition, Charles Wesley never wrote a note of music as far as I know.

Others have taken traditional hymn lyrics, and try to set them to more lively music, this has mixed success, there was a group called the Church Light Music group in the 1950s which published a book of such hymns in 1960, some of these have taken hold.

And then some write words and music, those I am most familiar with are Graham Kendrick, whose hymns I mostly find easy to sing, and Townend and Getty, less so. For instance "In Christ Alone" is fine when you know it, and has uplifting lyrics, but the change in tempo between first and second line always seems to catch people out. At least with this one you have the chance to get it right in the second and subsequent verses. Bernadette Farrell's hymns are usually quite easy to pick up. "Shout to the Lord" by Darlene Zschech is very hard, there is a complete change of tempo between the verse and the chorus, then it ends.

Some people don't like Sydney Carter, I do. Ok, Lord of the Dance is a bit trite, and is ruined a bit by the association with Flatley, but most of his songs, whether hymns of folk, make you think.

But I think when people say "Praise songs" above, this is something else, these are things without either musical or lyrical structure. You get a few of these in Mission Praise, and I would run a mile from any church which used them.

All of this by the way is written from a UK perspective, those elsewhere may not know of these examples.