Excellent choice.
Cream - Fresh Cream
The debut album from one of the most important groups to come out of the '60’s. Short studio versions with teasers of the greatness that would come from the live versions of staples like I’m So Glad, Toad and Spoonful.
If Fresh Cream was their only album, Cream would be remembered as “What could have been.”, instead of being the true start of what IMO, was the greatest group, trio, rock/jazz assembly ever!
All my musically aware life, Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and Love’s “Forever Changes” have been perennial “Greatest Albums Of All Time” entries. I have both on CD; the Love album is great from start to finish, but I didn’t get the “classic” status of “Astral Weeks”, but then again, I’m really not a Van Morrison fan.
I’d maybe offer The Grand Illusion by Styx for consideration. Yes, there are a lot of “hits” off of the album, but to me none of them are outstanding in relation to each other. A solid album with interesting and well crafted songs from beginning to end, not one of which is set apart from the other.
What? Come Sail Away basically defines Styx. Its their signiture song. At least it was when I was a young lad in the 70s.
Definitely the song that got me interested in them, and it absolutely stands out on the radio. But when I put that album on, it sits as a solid end of side 1 after three also great songs. It may have an edge, but I don’t think it’s outstanding on the album in a meaningful way. YMMV of course.
“Dark Side of the Moon” is a special case. On the one hand it did have a hit with “Money”, but the hit was almost a side-show. The album itself went to #1, and stayed in the Billboard top 200 for an astounding 736 consecutive weeks from 1973 to 1988. By 2016 it had spent a total of 1716 weeks in the top 200. In 1991 Nielson started tracking sales of the album (18 years after its release) and since then it has sold 9.5 million copies in the U.S. It had already been certified 11x platinum before 1990. Worldwide sales are estimated at around 45 million copies.
And yet “Money” was the only hit song, and was a minor hit going to #13 on the U.S. chart and didn’t chart very high in the UK at all.
As for other albums, you could count every Grateful Dead album except the one with ‘Touch of Grey’ - their only hit - on it. That is, if you like the Grateful Dead.
Supertramp’s ‘Crime of the Century’ is great from front to back, and never had a hit song in the U.S. The album itself sold around 9 million copies around the world.
I was going to post this thought as well, but…
Deadheads think that most Dead albums are outstanding.
Non-Deadheads have no idea regarding any Dead album.
5:15 was the biggest hit. #20 in England, #45 in the US when released coinciding with the film a few years later. Not one of their top hits, but that’s what’s on the greatest hits compilation from Quadrophenia and it did chart decently well in at least their home country. I would agree in general though that the album generally just has a lot of really good tracks that work together as a whole, and not anything that really stands out.
Hollywood Town Hall The Jayhawks
Search it out if you don’t know it. It will be like your favorite sweater by the fire.
That’s your go-to for Yes? The one single fully off Close to the Edge, And You And I, is probably the worst track on the album (but given there’s only 3, that’s not saying much). (I’ll note that the title tracks’ “Total Mass Retain” movement was put on the B-side of “America”, which wasn’t any any regular studio album). I remember getting Close to the Edge for Christmas in the mid-90s from my uncle the after my dad found out I had purchased Dark Side of the Moon with my own money, along with 4 other similarly-aged albums , all of which I was well aware at least one song from due to radio play, but not so with Close to the Edge. I think it would be the first thing to come to mind - though not that Tales is exactly wrong either.
Agreed; as a longtime Yes fan, it’s CttE that I was going to nominate for this thread. I love listening to it, but it’s not like there’s one song that’s a standout in its own right.
And, this website, Ultimate Classic Rock, ranks it as the best of all of Yes’s albums.
In the early 2000s, Heavy Metal Drummer got played the shit out of on the alternative stations in Chicago.
This is one of my favorite albums, but you definitely need to be in a certain mood to truly appreciate it. There are no radio hits on it, but there are outstanding songs, like “Cypress Avenue” and the title track. “Cypress Avenue” puts gets me teary eyed and awash in nostalgia, as does “Astral Weeks”: “If I ventured in the slipstream/ Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop/Could you find me?/Would you kiss-a my eyes?/To lay me down/In silence easy/To be born again/To be born again.” Chills. Just chills. Every time.
There’s no “hit song” as per the OP, but I would say there’s songs that define the album and the style.
Those two songs, along with Madame George, are the ones I enjoy. (The others… uhh, Slow Slim Slider?, Step Up Like Ballerina? barely leave an impression.) If you feel they’re great songs, I won’t argue, and might agree. But, for one reason or another Astral Weeks (the song) doesn’t get covered (live or recorded) like the thematically similarly Into the Mystic does, or the kinda similarly jazzy Moondance does.
So, if someone thinks the good songs on Astral Weeks are less than great — maybe because the melodies are too diffuse, or that the the songs are as much mood pieces as tight constructions, I won’t argue against that either.
Madame George would have been my next mention, so we’re all on the same page. It is a difficult album to cover, and I’m not sure I would want to hear covers of anything off Astral Weeks, but I could be surprised. That whole album is so tied up to me with its loose, improvised vibe and “lightning in a bottle” performances. It just feels too personal, too naked, too idiosyncratic for anybody to cover in a way I would like.
“Bloody Well Right” reached #35, and over the years has had a lot of AOR airplay, at least in my area.
Several years later, a live version of “Dreamer” made a brief foray into the American Top 40. It’s a great song.
Always liked Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1987). Maybe it was the times or maybe it was just me, but that album really spoke to me, especially “Think About Me” and “My Life/Your World.” It did have a minor hit with “Jammin’ Me” but overall the album was pretty low key in the success department. I loved it.
If we’re talking in terms of radio play, Bat Out of Hell is one of the best-selling albums of all time and has several iconic songs on it, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single song off of it, or any other Meat Loaf album, on classic rock radio, and I’ve been listening to classic rock radio since I was a kid in the '80s. Back in the day, “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” peaked at #11 on the Hot 100, and that was the best he ever did in the charts until “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, off of the much less memorable Bat Out of Hell II, somehow made it to #1 in 1993.
Soft Machine Third is considered a classic of jazz fusion/progressive rock. The songs run over fifteen minutes each and don’t stand out individually.
The entire Canterbury scene didn’t produce great songs, but many great albums.