I was a little shocked when I first listened to GOOYOW. It distinctly sounded like the rhythm section of Beautiful Day. After a few more listens, it sounded like they basically took the backbone of Beautiful Day and dropped a new song over it. Now, I actually like this song, it's in my opinion the best of the 4 we've heard, but using the bass/drum sound from Beautiful Day kinda bugs me. To me it's either they used it because BD was a hit and they thought let's just put another song on top and maybe we'll get another hit or they just couldn't come up with anything so they lazily used BD.
Yesterday I clicked on one of the links here and heard American Soul. My jaw dropped when it came to the chorus. They used a piece from a 3 yr old song from the last album as the chorus to a new song! I just don't buy that these albums are linked argument as a way to justify this. I can see if they used it as fade in/fade out as some sort of link, but they are using it as the chorus to the song! Would people be ok if a chorus on the new album was "I can't live, with or without you"? It's just seems lazy to use something that appeared on record 3 years ago.
Are U2 running out of ideas? Blatantly using words and music as a major part of new songs that have been a part of older albums. I hope this is just these 2 songs and that's it. Many bands, including U2 have borrowed from other bands. They did it with Beautiful Day, Do You Feel Loved, Bullet the Blue Sky, etc.. but to take an old song of your own and drop a major piece of it into a new song is kinda unheard of.