So I'm certainly a lot more optimistic about the next record's quality than I was following No Line when I was wondering if U2 had lost the plot a bit, though it's just that U2 is now hamstringing itself with everything else about their albums. The promotional rollout, the iTunes release, the uninspired choices for singles....for a band so worried about "not sounding like U2," they sure pick the safest possible examples of the U2 sound for the singles market.
Truth be told, I think the single choices were more or less the right ones for each album. A little bit too reliant on I–V–vi–IV or G-D-A-Bm chord progressions, but that’s not too different from what they’ve done in the past either (Streets, WOWY, Beautiful Day, Magnificent… same thing). Half the songs on SOI used them, but it was an album I was pretty happy with anyway, just on the song quality alone.
The Best Thing did somewhat respectfully on radio and probably was the best chance to get airplay anyway. I think I read somewhere that it usually takes a listener an average of seven seconds to determine whether they want to keep listening to a song or change the channel. Overall, I think there’s more going on hook-wise there than any other song on the album, whatever the lyrical quality or anything.
As for the other things that go into promo and releasing… it’s always fun to Monday Morning Quarterback that to an extent. But at this point, it’s hard for me to get too invested in what my favorite bands do or don’t. We’d have been doing that back in the “glory days” too if we had the Internet in the 80s or 90s… but whatever the case, I’ll either like the songs or I won’t and that’s really the end game in any case.
My own experience with writing songs in recent years kind of makes me look at it with a new perspective too. There’s just way too many decisions that go into writing something to really say “You have to do it this way, you have to avoid this… just do it in this styling.” Most contemporary acts, however different, probably latch onto songwriting in a similar way… you get an idea, you fine-tune in the instrument you're playing or the idea/lyric that comes in your head, and you keep at it until you have a finished product. Then when you have that finished product and sit on it for awhile, you sometimes come back to it and think “Hey, this isn’t that good” or “this could be better.” Then you fine-tune some more… and probably get accused of overproducing or trying to tune your music to radio-friendly material by people who aren’t even in the room with you!
But 99.9% of the time, you're not ever happy with what you come up with anyway. You always think it comes up a tad short or could be better. Such is the life of a guy or girl who creates things a lot of the time.