errrr... Jon never says he co-wrote his first hit "Runaway"...

To make things clear for everybody, please let me explain my point: I never said Jon & Richie sucked as songwriters, I only underlined the true fact that their major hits were co-written with an outside songwriter. There's no shame about it, it's common practice and who says a band has to write their material alone?!

Here we're talking about commercial success/sales, not about artistic quality. Sometimes the two overlap, sometimes they don't, no big deal!
For example I think that many songs co-written by Richie for his solo albums are very beautifully written but they didn't have much commercial success. It's sad but it doesn't mean that the songs suck. The same with Jon's except that I'm really tired of his formula (his "life is tough but I'm strong and I'll make it through with you" and the likes).


At their beginning, the 4 U2 boys decided that they'd equally share the credits for all their songs no matter who really wrote them because they were friends, they were a garage band and they wanted the public to see them as such: a bunch of friends making it in the music business.
And on the economic level, they wanted to equally share their earnings or else Bono and Edge who write most of the songs would have been a lot richer than Adam and Larry who don't. Because they are smart and clever and know that money is the main source of conflict, frustration coming from the difference in earnings is what causes a split-up in most cases...