What concerns me is actually how long hey are prepared to wait for 'God to walk in the room' again.
They have just made it harder. They've abandoned the true 'God walking through the room' magic of the way they used to make records. They'd jam and accidentally just stumble into something incredible.
These days, straight from the horses mouth, they won't even pursue something unless it "can be put across on an acoustic guitar". Because, you know, that totally applies to so much of their best music. Like Streets, Pride, I Will Follow...I could keep going and going.
They've changed how they conjure up the songs - for the worse.
The song Bad is basically two chords (almost entirely) throughout. And yet it is more dynamic than anything they've made in the last 15 years. So if you catch my drift, it cannot be said any better than that.
Bono even remarks about this very thing in U2 BY U2. As soon as they got good (he used to say "we weren't any good, we were just great" and he was right), they lost something. It's too formulaic, it doesn't provide for much magic. I run into the very same thing in writing music. I can empathize.
I just wish they'd say "let's do one like the old days". And just bang one out like they used to. And if the tune doesn't have discernible chord structure, so what? But they won't. Bob Dylan once said to them "nobody will be able to play your songs". That's the single greatest compliment that U2 has ever received (that I've heard). And yet they recoiled against that idea.
They deliberately moved away from that magic so that they could write classic pop songs. They took away what made U2 so uniquely different and special. I still love them, but I miss that magic. It's not there. No matter what anyone says, no matter how nostalgic they are for Beautiful Day, it isn't there in that song. Good song, great song, whatever floats your boat. Same with Invisible, fine song but it's not magic.