Billy Budd sucks.
Are we friends? Awesome!
Whew. 
Here is one that no one can disagree with (I hope):
Something in the Air - Thunderclap Newman
It is still, forty plus years later, one of my favourite, absolute favourite, songs.
A great debut, and easily their second-best album, but I have to go along with the conventional wisdom that the self-titled second album is the one where they really knocked it out of the park.
Molly Hatchet made one great album, Flirting With Disaster. Other than that, everything else they did is mediocre at best, in my opinion.
It is my opinion that a coach with no previous head coaching experience AFASIK, who takes over the team shortly before the tournament begins and then wins the tournament has caught lightning in a bottle. He in fact later had what is considered the greatest college recruiting class in history play for him without winnning a championship, yes they got to the finals two years in a row, but did not win, which shows how hard that tournament is to win. I would gladly have Steve Fisher coaching my team any day of the week, but the five game stretch in 1989 was unbelievable.
As the OP stated “I’m sure there are other prolific artists that have that one work that blows all their other stuff away - let’s hear about it!”
woodstockbirdybird:
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Otis Redding released a ton of amazing songs. This performance alone puts him among the greats. The fact that the white suburban audience didn’t catch on until his posthumous crossover hit doesn’t mean he didn’t have the material before that.”
I agree that OR was a fantastic performer, writer and showman. I also think that"SOTDOTB" is so superior to the rest of his work that it meets the OP’s criteria. It’s just an opinion and YMMV. i would be curious which of his other recordings is the equal of the one I suggested. I like “Try a little tenderness” myself, but I also like it by Jimmy Durante.
Not a joke, but I should have noted that this is far and away his best album as opposed to best ever performance or song. I would rate “What’d I Say” and “America the Beautiful” as being transcendental as well, but when it comes to his albums MSICAWM changed the way that people viewed country music and awakened the public to its possibilities. There has been no other country album I have ever heard that compares favorably to it and the only other Ray Charles albums that are comparable are greatest hits albums. Yes the man has done remarkable things and created remarkable music but nothing compares, album-wise to that one.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Strawberry Alarm Clock yet. Incense and Peppermints is not only excellent but almost iconic. But pretty much nothing else the band ever did was much good, unless you like cheesy, campy stuff like The Birdman of Alkatrash. 
I’m not a Rod Stewart fan. But whoa, where did Every Picture Tells a Story come from?
I absolutely love this song, but it does sadden me that kids these days probably have no idea who Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson are.
Blookrock made a lot of decent solid rock and I like listening to it.
But DOA was something entirely different. Once you heard it you never forgot it. People continue to talk about how freaked out they were when they first heard this song.
Chances are decently good that you’ve never heard any of their other music; there will be a few links in YouTube to songs such as “Jessica” and “Lucky in the Morning”, to which you’re welcome to give a listen. But only DOA is awesome.
I think that applies to my two choices:
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep, Mountain High
I love Ike and Tina Turner and particularly “River Deep and Mountain High” but it is hard to argue that this is the high point of their recording careers. It did not even break into the top 50 in the U.S. while “Proud Mary” won a Grammy. For me the two best songs by the duo were “A Fool in Love”
and “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”
Vinne Moore
A very popular shred guitarist…a style I absolutely hate.
But he made one album, Out of Nowhere, that is not shred at all. It has solid, melodic instrumental rock. Great, through and through. Only album of his that I can listen to.
It was a big hit over here in the UK.
However, as I alluded to in my post, it was probably the production rather than the artistes that made the record what it was.
Well, as someone earlier mentioned this is probably better discussed in a spin-off thread in The Game Room, but (as you rightly mentioned) he did get the Fab 5 to back to back title games - that’s not as good as winning, of course, but certainly must count as close to winning. So for this discussion, I would have to say that that title run wasn’t wildly out of character for the rest of his career in the way the OP was talking about… but about music. 
Peak chart position is not a good metric of song excellence, and a Grammy award is even worse.</tangent>
“Summer in the City” is far and away the best thing the *Lovin’ Spoonful *ever recorded.
I cannot let this post go without pointing out that Jim Steinman wrote every song on this album,and it is the best selling albumn with every song written by one person.
Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest”