Yeah, totally, it's not like all listening was to albums crafted as albums, and there's some hindsight-benefit where modern listeners who like vinyl favor the albums that succeeded at being an album-as-artform and ignore the ones that only had like two good tracks. Plus, radio, jukeboxes, and 45s existed at the same time as LPs.
Well, yeah. Even at the time, there was far far more music published than anyone could buy, especially considering the existing back catalogs. Why wouldn't you just buy the good stuff? This isn't 'cheating.'
If you were/are careful in your purchases, you could/can find plenty of albums that are wall-to-wall magic. Some that I enjoyed in my youth:
- Beatles, Revolver
- Beastie Boys, Ill Communication
- Led Zeppelin IV
- Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy
- Metallica, self-titled ("Black Album")
- Nirvana, Nevermind
- Pearl Jam, Ten
- Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
- Radiohead, OK Computer
- Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle
- Weezer, self-titled ("Blue Album")
