Artists for whom you have a firm "cut-off" album

Genesis's best albums are Duke and Abacab

 

I don't really know if his songwriting improved as much as you say, but, I appreciate your opinion.
I sampled the album, with 30 second snippets. Maybe need to give the album a fuller listen.
At first blush, it doesn't outshine my cutoff album. I could be wrong.

 

Moody Blues - Seventh Sojourn. This based on many years consideration of the Moodies' latter-day catalog, which, compared to the 'Classic 7', is decidedly second-rate. Hayward and Lodge, especially, seemed to have decided to follow Neil Diamond, John Denver and others in writing and singing an excess of slow ballads to near-menopausal women.

 

Ok. Take this with a grain of salt, it's just my opinion. Whatever streaming devices you sample through. They will always sound inferior to the real source. If you don't like Longest Days. The first song on Life, Death, Love, and Freedom, I don't see how you ever liked John Mellencamp in the first place.

 

I stop before Paul Simon's Graceland. It's all downhill from there IMO.

And Around the World in a Day was Prince's last good one throughout. Can't stand that bad, dated drum sound throughout Parade.

 

Doors w/ Jim Morrison: American Prayer

 

Simple Minds - Street Fighting Years
Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood
Erasure - Erasure
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Muse - The Resistance
Ozzy Down To Earth
Green Day - Insomniac
RHCP - Stadium Arcadium
Barenaked Ladies - Everything To Everyone
Simply Red - Stars
Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me
They Might Be Giants - No!
Live - The Distance To Here
Weezer - Pinkerton
ZZ Top - Afterburner

 

I think Long Distance Voyager is almost on a par with the classic 7. That album however was a blip - after they they seemed to lose the plot.

 

The Rhythm of The Saints is on par with Graceland, IMO.

 

Octave is good too, and it's the last one with Mike Pinder.

 

The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies
Blood Sweat and Tears - Child Is Father to the Man
The Who - Quadrophenia
Flash and the Pan - s/t
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
Pink Floyd - Meddle

 

Alice In Chains - S/T
Coldplay - Parachutes

 

So far I've stopped with Tempest when it comes to Dylan.

 

Bob Dylan: New Morning
The Byrds: Ballad Of Easy Rider
Jefferson Airplane: Volunteers
The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies
The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street
The Who: Who Are You

 

This was the last Fishbone album I bought:

 

Why would streaming using a lossless service always sound inferior to the real source?

 

Moody's, To Our Children's Children's Children

Stones, Exile On Main Street

Beatles, Let It Be...

 

Leonard Cohen, So You Want It Darker...

 

Chicago II, nothing after

 

Stevie Wonder, Songs In The Key Of Life

 

CSN&Y, Four Way Street

 

What's funny - at least in the context of this thread - is LDLAF is the album where I come INTO the Mellencamp camp... there are a few songs prior to this (especially Rural Route) that I like, but this album is where I start loving him as a mature, album-oriented artist... and this album in particular has enamored me more than anything else since 2000 by any artist...

 

That is his final album ever so you held on to him until the end.

 

Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
Pink Floyd - Animals
The Cure - Wish
Placebo - Sleeping with Ghosts
Marillion - Seasons End
New Model Army - The Love of Hopeless Causes

Everything after while offering a few rare high points on some later albums, all offer diminishing returns.

 

Only one for me: Kiss

After Creatures of the Night, every album was filled with utter garbage. It took me until Crazy Nights to realize this wasn't a bad period but just how they wrote from now on. I've heard all of them, but I only bothered buying everything up to 1982 on CD. (I kept on to Hot In The Shade on vinyl.)