Bands/artists you'd promote/demote if ranking just three best albums

[KevShmev]

In other words, if you had to rank every favorite band/artist based off just your three favorite albums by them (NO CHEATING, THREE ONLY!!), which ones would be higher than on your normal list and which ones would be lower.

It has been a while since I did a favorite bands/artists lists, but the ones I think would move up would be:

Dave Matthews Band - I doubt they'd be a top 20 band for me all-time, but based off just their first three studio albums, they'd be top 10 easily and borderline top 5.
Queensryche - They also would not be top 20 for me, but they'd likely sneak into the top 10 or comes pretty close off the strength of Rage for Order, Mindcrime and Promised Land.

The most obvious downgrade for me would be:

Blue Oyster Cult - they'd be in my all-time top 10, but while I love many of their albums, none of them are really top tier all-time for me (none would be a top 25 all-timer for me, for example), so they would slide down a bit if ranking based off just my three favorites by everyone.
 

[HOF]

DMB and QR are good ones, though for me it would be Mindcrime, Empire, and Promised Land.

Dream Theater would be another who would get a bump by this for me (I&W, Awake, and FII). 

Yes might be another to get a decent bump, though it would be tough to pick which of Fragile, Close to the Edge, Relayer, and 90150 to discard.

Eric Johnson is already pretty high in my ranking of favorite artists, but Tones, Ah Via Musicom, and Venus Isle are pretty much all he needs to be up there and it’s possible he’d be higher if I could only pick 3 from each artist/band.

[EPICVIEW]

I have to think... thinking is hard... stay tuned  LOL

[425]

Off the top of my head:

Transatlantic and NMB might go to bring my top two favorite artists. They’re very high ranking for me anyway, but the fact that they have five and four albums respectively makes it hard for me to put them ahead of artists that have 10 or 12 albums that I really like. If everyone is limited to three, it becomes hard for me to find anyone who can beat Bridge Across Forever/Whirlwind/Kaleidoscope or The Grand Experiment/The Great Adventure/Innocence & Danger.

Yes would benefit a lot. I love CttE and Fragile, and like a few others, but they have other stuff that doesn’t interest me. Those two plus either Relayer or GftO would fare well. The same is probably true for other 70s prog bands. My Rush top 3 would do pretty well, although I find most of their other albums at least somewhat interesting, unlike Yes.

Kamelot, I think, would also benefit quite a bit. The Karma-Black Halo run is elite, and while I like a lot of their other material, none of it reaches that level.

Haken would definitely benefit. I adore Aquarius and The Mountain, and have learned to appreciate Affinity, but everything after it is a huge step down.

Who is harmed? Dream Theater probably would be to the extent that they might lose favorite band status for me. IAW and SFAM are both top 10 albums, but I don’t think they have a third that’s quite at that level. Instead, I think they have a really strong and consistent discography with something I love on each and every album, but some weaker elements on most.

I think Metallica would be harmed as well. My favorite songs from them are spread across a bunch of different albums, and taking a top three would mean leaving off either RtL or Load, and with it some of my favorite of their songs. (The two locks are AJFA and TBA.)

Finally, although they’re very much an albums band, I think Coheed and Cambria might be hurt. There are two clear-cut choices (IKSOSE and NWFT), which I love, but my candidates for third album are less than stratospheric. I’d probably go with Afterman: Descension or Vaxis II, which are both good albums, but not great ones.

[Cool Chris]

My first thought is easy: Rush. The trio of Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and A Farewell to Kings is better than any set of three albums (or more!) by just about any other band I ever listen to.

The Cult's would see a big bump if only considering Love/Electric/Sonic Temple.

I don't know how much of a boost they'd get, but Duran Duran could have stopped making albums after Duran Duran/Rio/7 and the Ragged Tiger and had a solid career in my book.

[Zydar]

The first one I though of was Oasis. They are already a Top 15 band for me, but based only on their three best/first albums (Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory, Be Here Now) I would easily put them in my Top 10. Their stuff from the 90s are brilliant.

[Stadler]

The first one I though of was Oasis. They are already a Top 15 band for me, but based only on their three best/first albums (Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory, Be Here Now) I would easily put them in my Top 10. Their stuff from the 90s are brilliant.

That's a good start.

This is pretty easy for me beyond that:
- Scorpions: I really like the first couple (the "Roth" years) but that first four (if it has to be three, I can make it three!) after Roth left are GOLDEN.  I haven't bought a Scorpions album since "Savage Amusement" and have no plans to.
- Aerosmith:  if Aerosmith was "Get Your Wings" through "Rocks", GTFO.  They would be "Led Beatles".
- Pink Floyd:  Most bands hit their stride on album two or three; it was their EIGHTH record that was the legendary one (DSOTM).
- U2: The run from "The Unforgettable Fire" to "Achtung Baby" (if you don't count "Rattle And Hum") or "The Joshua Tree" to "Achtung Baby" (with "Rattle And Hum") is as good as any three albums by any band ever.  There's a lot of crap circling that group.
- The Who:  "Tommy", "Who's Next" and "Quadrophenia" far eclipse the rest of the catalogue, even if there are good songs on the other albums.
-  The Kinks: "Misfits", "Low Budget", "Give The People What They Want"; I know the "opera" records are legendary, and they are undeniably works of art, but they do very little for me.   Those three - the "arena years" - are fantastic records.   I'm pretty sure Rush agrees with me (they have two albums named after - maybe not on purpose - Kinks songs).

Not sure I could name a "demotion", though.  I have to think about that.  Maybe the Beatles?   I'm not a huge "Beatles ALBUM guy" after Abbey Road, so maybe.

[WilliamMunny]

Interesting thread (per usual, Kev).

It's difficult to answer, because the bands I enjoy I tend to go 'all in' with (like, I'm the guy that will argue for the The Elder being a misunderstood masterpiece). So, being the apologist that I am, I rarely fall in 'like' with a band.

That said, this sort of question lends itself to bands with long, uneven catalogs, and as I get older, I'll be the first to admit the list grows longer.

I'd have to really think about to come up with anything definitive, but off the top of my head three 'obvious' ones come to mind:

Queensryche – for reasons already outline by other posters, this band's catalog is extremely bloated (IMO), but their peak elevates the band in my eyes. Had they stopped in the mid '90s, I'd look back on the whole body of work much more fondly. I'm happy the band is still doing what they want to do, but I have little to no connection with QR today, even though they were a top-3 band for much of my teens.

Smashing Pumpkins – again, one of 'all-time' favorite bands at the time of their initial breakup. The run from Gish through Machina is stellar...the past twenty years, eh, not so much.

Journey – Perry is my guy (all time favorite vocalist), so I'm obviously only here for '77 to '86 (and maybe that pit stop in '94/95). At this point, the non-Perry albums outnumber his output, but if I was ranking them based of the run of Escape through ROR, they are a top-10 band easy.

[HOF]

Smashing Pumpkins are a good one, but for me it would be the first three albums (Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie).

[WilliamMunny]

Smashing Pumpkins are a good one, but for me it would be the first three albums (Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie).

Yeah, I didn't specify which three, but I could honestly make a case for any combo of those 5 albums (Gish, Siamese, Mellon Collie, Adore, Machina), as they all hold up. Add to that a VERY essential B-sides collection and an unofficially released post-script (Machina II) and you have a really potent body of work.

Everything since the 2006/07 return has really left me scratching my head. It's like, the pieces are there, but it's just, well, not very interesting (to me, at least).

[HOF]

Smashing Pumpkins are a good one, but for me it would be the first three albums (Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie).

Yeah, I didn't specify which three, but I could honestly make a case for any combo of those 5 albums (Gish, Siamese, Mellon Collie, Adore, Machina), as they all hold up. Add to that a VERY essential B-sides collection and an unofficially released post-script (Machina II) and you have a really potent body of work.

Everything since the 2006/07 return has really left me scratching my head. It's like, the pieces are there, but it's just, well, not very interesting (to me, at least).

I sort of consider Zwan (which is great) to be a Smashing Pumpkins album since it was Billy and Jimmy, but yeah I haven’t gotten into any of their later day content.

[Buddyhunter1]

There's one band that absolutely shoots up in quality if judged this way and that's Leprous. My enjoyment of that band fell off a cliff after their first three albums.

There's also some bands that I'd consider among my favorites but it's more for their consistency or variety rather than having a bunch of great albums, such as Thy Catafalque or Ulver. If they had only released a few albums my overall outlook on them might be a bit lower.

Pretty much every band in my top 5 wouldn't be affected by this because their best albums are among my favorite albums of all time, so...

[soupytwist]

Promote - Muse, Radiohead, Faith No More, Live, Chili Peppers, Screaming Trees, WIthin Temptation, Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica.

Demote - Maiden, REM, Coheed, Lana Del Rey.

[Cool Chris]

Promote - WIthin Temptation

Thought about including them in my initial list.

- The Who:  "Tommy", "Who's Next" and "Quadrophenia" far eclipse the rest of the catalogue, even if there are good songs on the other albums.

I've fallen out of love with Tommy, but Who's Next and Quadrophenia are still elite level albums for this Who fan. I also thought about them when I did my post earlier, just felt there is too much other good material in their catalog.

[hefdaddy42]

My brain can't contort this way.

[Skeever]

dredg likely get a big promotion.

Sigur Ros probably get a promotion.

Iron Maiden get demoted (it's more about the longevity and the overall consistent quality of their output then three albums)

[LithoJazzoSphere]

This is a difficult one for me.  For the most part I tend to evaluate artists on peaks rather than consistency and longevity, so often I'm only coming back to a small handful of albums by most artists anyway (and reasonably often it's just favorite songs).  So I think it's more a matter of what artists dipped so far that it actually sullies my feelings about even their best albums, and really the only good candidate for that category for me is In Flames.  Either grouping of The Jester Race-Clayman in particular is incredible, but their work in the 2010s was quite frustrating. 

So I guess the best way I've thought about to view the question is what artists do I like that don't really have one particularly outstanding album or two, it's mostly that I like their output as a whole and a lot of different songs scattered throughout their discography, and if you chopped all but three out they might not have enough leftover to compete quite as well with more concentrated favorites.  So that leaves me with some candidates like Devin Townsend, Rush, Delain, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, Autumn's Grey Solace, Emily Remler, King Crimson, Arch Enemy, Genesis, Dark Tranquillity, Sara Gazarek, Perturbator, Yes, Carlos Santana, Novembers Doom, Wayne Shorter, Entrails, Thelonious Monk, Skinny Puppy, the Scorpions, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, Frontline Assembly, McCoy Tyner, Edge of Sanity, Tommy Flanagan, Swallow The Sun, and Oregon.  Still love all these, but I'd probably think slightly less of them if their discographies were chopped down to just three. 

[Skeever]

Marillion probably getting a big promotion

[Zantera]

Oasis is definitely a good shout. Their first 2 albums are fantastic, after that it gets worse and worse for me and so if there was a cut off after 3 albums, suddenly it looks pretty great. There's not much of value for my own enjoyment from the albums post Be Here Now (aside from maybe a few songs), heck I could even do without Be Here Now if I had The Masterplan as the third album.

Ulver is one. I think I would be happy if I had Perdition City, Shadows of the Sun and maybe Blood Inside. They have made some other good albums but I don't really revisit those that much.

I almost wanted to say The Mars Volta because the first 2 albums are in a league of their own, however I still revisit Amputechture and Bedlam in Goliath a fair bit, so for me it would be hard to leave out either of those two. Dream Theater is also a close shout for me because I would say aside from Awake, Scenes, Six Degrees and Images, I don't get much out of the other albums, however that's also 4 and not 3, and I would struggle to decide what to leave out. However I would probably feel more fondly about a DT that only had Images, Awake and Scenes (as an example) than all the other albums that I feel more ambivalent towards. Similar with Pixies - I really like their classic 4 albums but don't care much for the reunion stuff at all. But again, that's 4 and not 3.

Looking at it from the other perspective, there's many bands I agree with like Iron Maiden for example where the consistent quality output in the discography is more valuable than just the 3 best albums.

[Stadler]

Marillion probably getting a big promotion

Yeah, this might be true, too.

The best (this could include Seasons End or Marbles, too):
Clutching
Misplaced
Brave

As compared to:
Somewhere Else
Holidays In Eden
Less Is Less

Yeah, big promotion.