I don't think anyone is trying to be contrarian here. It would be boring if everyone loved everything. The only thing that I find frustrating sometimes is that some of the critiques of latter-day U2 hit me like we listened to two different songs or two different albums. I see some things written here where my feeling isn't, 'yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I disagree', it's more 'did we listen to the same thing? because I don't hear what you're saying at all.'
Example: People referring to SOI was 'bland' and 'inoffensive'. I can see those descriptions for the first half of the record(though I don't entirely agree with it), maybe everything up through Volcano. I absolutely cannot see those descriptions for the back half of the record, RBW onward. To me it feels like people are sometimes taking a fair critique of half an album and applying it to the whole thing.
Another example: The endless shitting by some on The Miracle. It's always about how it's a Frankenstein's monster of disparate parts, it's talked about like it's Stand Up Comedy or something. Yeah, I can hear the different parts but they go together well enough for me, and I honestly think it's easily the best single they've put out since Vertigo(this wouldn't be the case if they'd been better at picking singles the past two albums).
Also, the common critique of the lyrical direction mystifies me. People say that it's a retrospective of their career and that they don't find that terribly interesting. That's not even what it is, imo. It's an examination of their psyches then vs now(at least four tracks are told from the perspective of Bono now, off the top of my head - Sleep, Reach, Troubles, Crystal Ballroom). It's not so much a retrospective as it is an acknowledgement that having the levels of fame and wealth they've had for so long has made them different people than they once were, and an attempt to re-connect with those people they used to be. Iris, according to Bono himself in an article, is about how badly he wishes his mother could see what became of her son. RBW is about growing up in an environment of terrorism and how that affected them emotionally and mentally. Cedarwood is about his home life as a kid, religiously split and then a single-parent home, and how it shaped him. Etc etc. It's actually, for me, the most interesting lyrical direction he's taken since Pop, and even you don't agree with that, which is fine, I feel like it's kind of dismissive to just say 'it's a retrospective and I don't find that interesting'. I actually feel like the whole thing is almost a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that much of his lyrics in recent years have been rather shallow in nature, and an attempt to to say something real for the first time in a long time. But maybe that's just me.
Finally, I also get a little annoyed when certain people say they don't like the album while also admitting they've barely listened to it since it came out. Sometimes you can listen to something you haven't listened to in a while and have it hit you differently than it did before.
Anyway, I've gotten long-winded here, but I do agree that no one is being contrarian. The criticisms are genuine, I just don't agree with them.