Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive!
Double live album, and his signature work (and generally hailed as one of the best live rock albums of all time). The live versions of his previous songs are nearly all superior to the studio versions.
Similar case:
Cheap Trick - Live At Budokan
Eels: electroshock blues
Garbage: Version 2.0
Laura Nyro - Eli and the 13th Confession
Wilson Pickett - The Wicked Pickett
Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die
Rolling Stones - Between the Buttons
The Fall - Wonderful and Frightening World
Danny Barker - Save The Bones
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
Velvet Underground - and Nico
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
Otis Redding - Live at Whisky a Go Go
Jeff Beck - Blow By Blow
U Roy - Original DJ
Dr John - Gris Gris
Thea Gilmore - Songs from the Gutter
Carole King - Tapestry
Radiohead - Ok Computer
Blood Sweat & Tears - Child Is Father to the Man
Counting Crows - August & Everything After
Dave Matthews Band - Crash
It’s a great album, but I like “The Bends” just as much.
Wild how totally divergent tastes can be. Several posters have mentioned albums that I don’t think of the outstanding album because others are much better.
I’ll just single out Blood, Sweat & Tears. I know that Al Kooper fanatics have disparaged David Clayton Thomas for 50 years. But the Blood, Sweat & Tears album with him as lead has better song choices - Kooper does not remotely compare to the songwriters they picked, better production, better arrangements, and even better vocals.
It also had three #2 singles, so it’s very much a “greatest hits” album. I think it’s one of the outstanding albums of the entire 60s. Nothing they did after comes close.
This is one of my top albums of all time. But I never got in to ANY more Radiohead, other than their radio hits. The composition of songs on OK Computer blows me away.
Kansas: Leftoverture
Although by market measure, Point of Know Return would have been bigger.
Patti Smith: Horses
Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes
The B52s: The B52s
Talking Heads: Little Creatures
Yes: Fragile
Suzanne Vega: Nine Objects of Desire
The Beatles - Revolver
Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town
just mentioning that we have:
- at least 3 Dylan albums that stand out above the rest
- and 2 Stones albums …
I herewith declare both do not have ONE album that stands out
ps: jokes apart - lots of good calls!
- Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert
- Dave Brubek - Time Out
- Pink Floyd - DSOTM
- Leonard Cohen - Songs of LC … (not a single bad song on this album)
Actually I concur with you, as I still consider “Sticky Fingers” the best album of all time. But it only stands out a little notch above “Exile On Mainstreet”, “Beggars Banquet” and “Let It Bleed”. so it’s not that outstanding in the Stones catalog. That’s why I also avoided to mention my favorite albums of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, R.E.M, Van Morrison and others, because those big guns all have four or five exceptional albums.
Disagree. The Who’s greatest album is Quadrophenia.
And four Springsteen albums… 
well, then - Springsteen is out, too!!!
I may have missed it, but you should have Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on the list.
You might as well eliminate The Beatles as well, because Rubber Soul is superior to Revolver.
But you will find people who would argue that the best Beatles album is either “Sergeant Pepper’s” or “Abbey Road”.