Which musical artists have the best album streaks? I’ll define an “album streak” as "a series of great albums that occur one after the other after the other, which could include full-length live albums or cover albums (perhaps even EPs or compilation albums, if you have good reason). I ask because I’m always amazed when an artist can continually produce outstanding work over a long period of time. I’m even more amazed at the sheer density of some artists’ output.
Blondie, for example, put out Blondie, Plastic Letters, Parallel Lines, and Eat to the Beat in a span of four years. I consider all of them exceptional.
What say you? Who has your favorite streak? Who has the longest streak? Who has the densest?
73 Greetings from Asbury Park NJ
73 The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
75 Born to Run
78 Darkness on the Edge of Town
80 The River
82 Nebraska
Starts out a little hyper and high-strung and jazzy, gets loud and breakthrough and deep and rich and then stripped down to acoustics recorded in his house. With “Badlands” almost right in the middle. Whoa.
Bowie was the first artist I thought of, but I’m not familiar with all of his (insanely huge amount of) work. Is Pin Ups considered a great album? Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World (aside from their amazing title tracks)?
The Kinks:
66: Face To Face
67: Something Else
68: Village Green Preservation Society
69: Arthur (or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
70: Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround
5 successive brilliant albums, one per year (during which time they also recorded other great songs that didn’t make it onto any of these albums)
Stevie Wonder:
72: Music of My Mind
72: Talking Book
73: Innervisions
74: Fulfillingness’ First Finale
76: Songs in the Key of Life
5 successive brilliant albums within 5 years—one a double album
Led Zeppelin’s first six albums would qualify for me (I-IV, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti.)
I would say all of the Pixies albums, including the Come On Pilgrim EP. Some may quibble with Trompe Le Monde being “great”, but I love that album, and it’s what got me into the Pixies originally.
R.E.M.
Murmur (1983)
Reckoning (1984)
Fables of The Reconstruction (1985)
Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)
Document (1987)
Green (1988)
Out of Time (1991)
Automatic For The People (1992)
Monster (1994)
New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996)
1967: The Velvet Underground & Nico
1968: White Light/White Heat
1969: The Velvet Underground
1970: Loaded
Although none of these barely troubled the album charts, I think a case could be made for these being four of the most important, groundbreaking and influential albums of all time.