good point, I remember people talking about hating U2 in 1994 and wishing they would go back to the UABRS era -- that they had balls then, and now it's all wussy songs like Mysterious Ways. it's *always* a feature of any band with any sort of longevity.
and it's important to note that we were all younger in 1994. i was a teenager, and music never quite hits you the way it does when you're 16 or 17 -- and we heard those songs with less developed brains and raging hormones and wild emotions, and lyrics like "7/11" don't offend the way "ATM machine" does 15 years later, not because one lyric is better/worse than the other, but because WE are different and WE have changed.
all that said, while GOO sounds vastly better now that i have my good headphones, what i find embarrassing isn't the lyrics, but the ("children, children, future, future") let's-hold-hands chorus, and it doesn't seem to go anywhere interesting at all. lots of pretty background but this one doesn't work for me.
my big picture thought at this stage: Bono is at his best when he's writing about himself and longing for a piece of him that is missing, and longing for something better. it's just not as engaging when he's trying to pass on advice (some rare exceptions would be Stuck and OOTS, because he sounds so *invested* in Hutchence/teenagers with eating disorders, whereas a song like MD feels too detached to be memorable). this is why TBT > GOO, for me, because TBT is about Bono and GOO is about his sons or something.