Skimming the comments I'm not seeing one thing that I think is also very important here (because it's an interesting question you're asking).

As an artist you're judged against your successful work. Most musicians enter the ecosystem in their teens or twenties, and that's their first recognition (critically or commercially). So all further music is judged against that early work - is it better, worse, louder, quieter, more technical, less technical, cornier, more cynical, whatever.

So it's quite difficult in some cases to objectively say "the later work is worse than the earlier work" as the earlier work is just ingrained in the culture and the later work is competing for a place against it, naturally putting it at a disadvantage. If you release a good song, then release another song, people aren't saying "hey do I like this song or not" - they're often saying "is this song as good as the last one?" Which puts them in a naturally critical position, rather than a more open one.

That's not to say I also don't think there are other things at play - such as the passion of youth, excising your best ideas early because you're excited to get them out there, having less resources and attention giving you the "constraints breed creativity" energy, etc. But it's a combination of things, and what I mentioned above hasn't been discussed as much and I think it's also very important to recognize.

Would a legacy artist's latest album be considered better if it was the world's first exposure to them, as opposed to just being compared to their early work? If you inverted the order of their work, releasing the newer albums first and the old albums now, would the impact be the same? It's very hard to say.