Producing one great album is too much for many musical artists. Sometimes even when they do, they cannot sustain the brilliance for various reasons (here is looking at you, Television). Creating back-to-back terrific records is rare.
There are some musical artists that are not mentioned below, but one could argue they should be. Black Sabbath had Paranoid and Master of Reality, and those were darn good. So are Depeche Mode's Black Celebration and Music for the Masses.
Before one gets too angry about what is listed here, just take a read. You might agree and want to add yours too. Maybe somewhere in the comments field? (We don't have that.) Or maybe we could be enticed into making another of these articles and we'd have back-to-back, well...somethings.
Best two-album runs in the history of rock music
David Bowie - Hunky Dory (1971) and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
There are many ways this could have gone with Bowie. One could point to two of his Berlin trilogy and say those back-to-back gems are his best. Heck, one could even say Bowie's last two records, The Next Day and Blackstar, are his back-to-back records. There is no real wrong answer simply because of the sustained excellence Bowie gave us during his lifetime.
Hunky Dory is here because it was the first record where the artist first showed us his incredible Bowie-ness. No one was making records that sounded exactly like he did and no one makes full-length albums that replicate Hunky even now. There is no way of doing so because he was the original and everyone else would simply be a copy.
After three previous albums that ranged from forgettable to pretty decent (The Man Who Sold the World), Bowie elevated himself and his art form with three of the first four tracks on Hunky Dory being "Changes, "Oh! You Pretty Things," and "Life on Mars" with a second side that featured odes to Lou Reed and Andy Warhol.
Then Bowie released the album that would change his life and many others, Ziggy Stardust. Through a character from another world, Bowie made all the "weird" kids feel OK to be strange. He spoke to the masses that deserved their own leader and he would stay that way for the rest of his life. Bowie, among everything else, never lied to us.