Fair point, plus I think it's Jon running out of inspiration in the last years. According to Richie he obviously doesn't want to sing songs about "broken hearts" etc (i.e. proper love songs) anymore as he seems to consider himself an artist with serious topics. But he either doesn't have the talent or the inspiration to write tunes from a social critical standpoint. While TC had it's promising lyric line every now and then, WAN lacked completely with regards to the lyrical content.

On another note I don't feel that it's the record company pushing them to hurry in a studio since Jon stated in the past: "We go into the recording studio with the songs 90% finished. We don't waste too much time in there."
The difference is that in the past those almost completed tracks were developed by the band while nowadays Jon, John and Bobby lay down most of the basics and the other input by especially Dave, Tico and Hugh seems to be minimalized to playing some fills over it.