I think it's an odd thread, why not include the 80's, it almost seems like you were looking to stir shit.
There are about as many songs that we've heard from either the JT-era or the AB-era as the 2000s in their entirety... I could the Salome bootleg in this, however.
(sigh...) I brought up the topic of the 90s/00s because the two decades have a similar amount of releases, and, rather obviously, they're the two most recent decades. The 80s had many more LPs and LP-tracks, so it's a bit hard to compare in fairness.
Actually, it would be interesting to break down the released/official tracks by number from each decade, to see how many there are. But it's tricky with remixes and various versions of the same song... About the 00s, don't forget the extra tracks that were released on U27 and The Complete U2 iPod thing.
About Passengers, whatever -- count it if you want. To me, if the band didn't release it under the name "U2" then it isn't U2. Otherwise, this gets very fishy. For example, is the Mission: Impossible theme "U2"? Does Bono & Gavin Friday = U2? If you say "no, because it has to have all 4 guys", then what about Passengers, which includes Eno? Isn't that by definition, not U2? So, to me, if the record isn't labelled as "U2", then it's not U2.
Of course, we aren't counting Passengers, any of those Bono duet adventures, Slide Away, In The name of The father...
Million $hotel tracks... this... was a very large part of my personal experience of the band in the 1990s.....
Note: But I will never agree that demos count as new songs any more than I'll agree remixes do....
I can't conceptually imagine 90's U2 without counting Your Blue Room and Miss Sarajevo. And it seems U2 can't either, as they both feature on the best of 1990-2000.
I already counted both of them in my stats ("Miss Sarajevo" because it was on the Best of 1990-2000, and "Your Blue Room" because it was a U2 B-side.) So, don't worry, your concept is intact.
I think it's fair to not count the rest of Passengers as long as those two are counted.
90s U2 is better than sex
It changes nothing, but just to respond to your comment that there were just a few other tracks, we aren't counting currently:
If you'll refer to my post near the bottom of page 1, you'll see that I listed three sets of stats for song # comparisons -- I put them in bold. The second of them counts all of the Passengers songs.
But as you say, the numbers are interesting but irrelevant to the topic of this thread.