Absolute killer records.

One of my best friends growing up had an unusual criterion that any album had to pass to be considered first-rate. It had to have "no bad songs." It was often the first thing he would tell you about an album -- not that it was terrific or featured this or that number, but that it had no weak links. And you know, he had something. 

He amassed a large record collection, most of which had at least one song he considered unlistenable and required skipping. Such albums could be otherwise boffo music, but they could never be really top-tier records. 

Still, even if a record had a stinkburger or two, you had to consider it to be doing well if it got radio play at all. Generally speaking, a record that had two songs on the radio was a big deal, three was a hit, and four or more? Absolute killer. When radio was king of music, you could tell which records were the killers, because (at least for young people) radio was just in the air, coming out of cars, from boom boxes, the kids in the backyard, the girls on the beach blankets. Off the top of my head, here are some records that were notable for multiple song radio play:

• Van Halen: 1984
• Guns 'n Roses: Appetite for Destruction 
• Fleetwood Mac: Rumors 
• The Who: Who's Next
• Huey Lewis and the News: Sports
• R.E.M.: Out of Time
• B-52s: Cosmic Thing

You notice that the records I've listed all came out before the mid-90s, and that's not a coincidence. Almost as soon as the Internet was launched, radio started to weaken as the responder to and arbiter of taste. Popular music got split into smaller and smaller sub-genres, and music was not played aloud in public places as often when everyone his own lightweight device that held tons of music. 

So it's unlikely that even Taylor Swift can ever top the biggest killer record of them all: 

Look, I never even liked Michael or any of the other Jacksons. Not my kind of sound. But I could appreciate the skill that went into the songs on Thriller. I had to. It was everywhere. Youngsters today may think they know what it's like when a popular song is everywhere, but they only get a taste of what it is like. Songs from Thriller could be heard anywhere at any time. Since it spent more than a year (!) at or near #1, from February 26, 1983, to April 14, 1984 (and has remained on the charts ever since, getting close to 630 weeks as I write), it was unavoidable. The album had seven singles, which is to say, the whole album not only sold far better than any before or since, but millions bought slices and then bought the whole pie. 

Reportedly Jackson challenged himself to better those numbers with his follow-up album, Bad, but he couldn't do it. Nobody could do it. And now that radio is less of a unifying force, it's doubtful anyone ever will. It's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing; it's a once-in-an-industry thing. 

My question to you is: What albums would you count as absolute killers, records that had many hits and near-hits that didn't just make the charts but powered into them? I'm sure you all know a lot more than the few that occurred to me on brief reflection. 

Or, what album is otherwise perfect but had that one crap song that you can't stand? 

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