Their songwriting process has never resembled that of others producing "perfect" pop songs, such as Paul McCartney, so I have no idea why they force themselves into that template. So many shitty rock bands do what U2 does in the recording studio; that is, get into a room together and jam, looking for something memorable to write a song around. The reason those bands suck is that they lack the chemistry or nuance U2 has as a quartet. They grab onto one riff without seeing how everything else fits in, which is where music gets really crappy for me.
One element that we haven't really touched on is the arrangement, which I guess is where hooks and surprise meet. I really respect artists who find ways to make verse/chorus into something intriguing. In the Oasis/Blur debate, both acts wrote functional pop music, but the former was a hell of a lot more surprising in their arrangements and overall presentation, whereas Oasis songs were these big slabs of music that didn't have a lot of grace. Their arrangements also became progressively more bloated and uninteresting as the albums piled up.
In that sense, I guess I completely agree with what you're saying; artists who write a decent hook and stuff it into an uninteresting verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge format with no surprise are very lazy and not worth caring about. On the other hand, most of these acts were Beatles inspired, and I don't see the harm in that. If anything, the Beatles were among the most surprising bands of all time. I would say that laziness and a lack of guts/creativity/inspiration are killing music, not an emphasis on strong songwriting.
