I doubt that U2 are as important to their label now as they were in 1997. If they are, then the people that run their label are fucking idiots, because depending on an old band for the health of your company means that they've never paid attention to who sells record. Hint: it's not bands of 50 somethings with 35 years and 13 records behind them.
UMG has Drake, Florence and the Machine, Ariana Grande, Avicci, Iggy Azalea, The Band Perry, Florida Georgia Line, Imagine Dragons, Rihanna.... U2 don't compare to those bands in terms of hits any more.
If we're to think that U2's creative freedom is constrained by their obligations to keeping record co. workers employed then they probably have more freedom now than they've had since before the Joshua Tree. And when they were important to the label they made their most far-out music. And Pop sold better than Zooropa, so....
Anyway, if the record companies cared about not laying people off then they've been doing a piss-poor job of showing it, what with 20 years of consolidation of record companies (the secret reason why the industry is dying).
U2 play it safe because they want hits, not because they want to keep people employed. Didn't Principle Management get absorbed into Live Nation anyway? And we all know that kind of move results in people losing their jobs.
It's great that Bono's recognized that SOI was overly polished though, and that Edge and Larry know it was a mistake to try to force NLOTH to be a pop album. And Adam acknowledging that they might stop trying to reach a mass pop audience...those all point to U2 realizing that they can do whatever they want. That fearlessness is what lead them to make their best work and be legends anyway.
As for the producer switching, I'd normally be inclined to think it's a bad idea, and I was really irritated by U2 working with Tedder, who's band I think is abominable. BUT Tedder worked wonders with Every Breaking Wave. The version with DM isn't nearly as good. Sure, the back half of SOI is a lot better, but I think that comes down to the songs being better rather than who was producing. For an album with so many different producers, engineers, and mixers it sounds very cohesive. The front half is slicker and poppier because it's a U2 record and they're almost all like that.
