What's "ironic" (and perhaps the ultimate irony) is that AB had those very catchy singles, with big hooks - meaning those songs would drag the "pop kids" in. So while Bono's stating how they may lose some, those songs brought them in.
Your argument is that those AB tracks didn't sound like anything on the radio at the time. I accept that argument and concur.
The same was true for "War" and JT.
Fast forward to 1997 - "Pop" had a few tracks similar to Prodigy and Chemical Bros. Could that have hurt the album?
And one of the big singles sounded like a George Harrison song. Could that have hurt?
Come 2000, ATYCLB is released and while U2 claimed this was their attempt at making an album full of singles, once again, it sounded like nothing out there at the time. I was actually worried that "Beautiful Day" would never catch on because it was so different. Back then, Spears and N'Sync and other pop groups ruled the charts. U2 stood out.
In 2004, I recall an article where the Edge's daughter stated that nothing on HTDAAB sounded like what was on the radio. This is Edge's daughter - a girl/young lady "hip" with the new music.
So in both cases, U2 were able to repeat what they did with "War", JT and AB - they created hit songs that didn't sound like anything out there.
Now, in 2009, we have so many U2 copycats, it's almost hard to tell when U2 releases a new album! I've heard songs by Fallout Boy, The Killers, Kings of Leon, Snow Patrol, Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay and several others that could have easily been a U2 song.
As a result, I'm almost worried that U2 sounding like U2 might suddenly be a bad thing - they won't stand out, even though it's their own sound!
Nonetheless, when I heard NLOTH, nothing leapt out as a "big hit". There was no "gotcha" single. And I think that is what's keeping U2 fresh.
Yes, they want hits - but they aren't trying so hard to get a hit that they are sacrificing their sound or the quality of the music.
You may not like all the songs on NLOTH, and that's fine. I don't like all the songs on any U2 album, and that includes NLOTH as much as it does JT and AB. But to my ears, U2 have once again found a sound that's different from what's out there (well, as much as it can be given the number of bands emulating U2's style).
In other words, U2 do work on the hits - but they don't sacrifice who they are to get that hit.