re: Classic albums where you actually preferred the follow-up album more

Hmmm. It's close, but I think I prefer Radiohead's Amnesiac to Kid A. I see Kid A on a lot of "greatest albums of all time" lists, but I think Amnesiac (which was made up of b-sides and outtakes that didn't make it onto Kid A in the first place) is the far superior collection of songs.

To me, Kid A was kind of like Radiohead saying, "Hey, look how weird we've gotten!", and Amnesiac was them saying, "All right, now look at how great an album we can make with that weirdness."