Best unbroken run of albums

r/radiohead does not allow crossposts so I'll just repost this here, but this is a copy of a post i've made in r/LetsTalkMusic. But this is Radiohead relevant.

Recently in FB group for a local record shop a conversation took place that kind of spilled over its banks, but I thought was fascinating and worth continuing. That conversation was specifically about the question:

“Has anyone ever had a better run of 4 albums than the Rolling Stones from ’68-’72 with Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, & Exile on Main St?” Now I am not the biggest Rolling Stones fan. They are good, certainly historic, but GOAT? Not for me.

But, I do think this format of looking at the strongest unbroken run of albums is an interesting frame through which to compare bodies of work. There are lots of bands that have a long history that come and go with the quality of their work. Oddly enough I think the Rolling Stones themselves are a great example of this, but maybe the biggest example of this would be Bob Dylan or Neil Young. When you have 50+ albums in your catalog they are not all going to be bangers. Similarly we can understandably forgive a band for not fully hitting on all cylinders out of the gate, or for resting on their laurels at the end of a career after styles and tastes have moved on. So can we look at just a continuous period where every album hits at a high level? Yes. Is it average or median? Why not both?

I’ve used a Reateyourmusic.com a lot when I am record shopping to quickly see what albums from artist I’m less familiar with I might want to start with, and while not perfect I think it offers a good data set to use for this purpose. So I’ve taken the best unbroken run of albums with a minimum of 4 and taken both found both the Average and Median of them. I’ve also found the Average of both the Average and Median for a combined score. I’m sure this breaks some law of statistics but oh well. I’m also not counting any live albums, compilations, soundtracks, or EPs.

As for who to include: Other than the Stone there are the obvious big three: the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. But I think there are many many other artist that can play well on this field. My first instinct past the classic rock pantheon was Radiohead. In that other FB chat lots of people threw out many other suggestions. I can not believe it took us so long to have Black Sabbath be suggested but oh man did they do well. The 4 album minimum does keep Nirvana off the list altogether. I think its hysterical to consider that you can find two different single 12 months spans for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in which they put out 5 or 6 albums that all score well. I think its fascinating how well Kendrick Lamar does. I of course think Kanye West is massively overrated. Do they and maybe Radiohead benefit from recency bias? King Crimson hold the records for most albums in a long that don’t hurt its stats. And of course there is the tragedy of the Beatles Yellow Submarine with its 2.91 score (highlighted in red) which does significantly bring their overall performance down. Though in the end discounting it would only move them up into 3rd place ahead of Black Sabbath in the Avg/Med score.

I’ve linked images of the data here

So, your thought? Is this methodology interesting, valid, or of any use? Am I making any significant data errors? Who else am I missing? What happens if we open the field to Jazz artists? Miles Davis certainly has some interesting runs. Though the manor in which Jazz records were produced and released in the 50s and 60s kind of keeps them in a field of their own.