This was a real issue back when we had to buy full albums (cassettes) back in the eighties.
Sure, we look back to some epic albums from that time, but a whole lot of them were the one top forty hit and a bunch of crap filler songs. But we had to suffer through it because we'd spent eight dollars of our hard earned money on that crap. (Eight dollars back then would be over twenty dollars in today money)
It was groundbreaking when the CD listening stations came to record stores.
All this said, I love listening to full albums and was one of THOSE guys back in the nineties who would seek out things like Japanese releases that had ever so slightly different versions of songs.
That's a good question. I gotta ponder that for a while.
I can think of albums like Nothing's Shocking that didn't have any top forty hits but was good all the way through, but one hit supported by an entire good album, that's a challenge.
It's the one hit criteria that makes it tough. I didn't much listen to anything top forty after 1985, so I can name a bunch of great indie albums that didn't chart. But if it was a good album that charted, it likely had several hits on it. You've really posed a great challenge. It may take me a week to come up with something.
Zappa has always been tough for me. His stuff is so out there and so complex, you gotta actively listen to it like a hundred times before you can even scratch the surface of understanding it.
The guy was definitely a generational musical genius.