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Originally Posted by choc e-Claire
1999 and 2000 are literally just a year apart.
Both bands were originally hugely different in style just two albums before - Radiohead as conventional alt-rock (The Bends) and Blur as tongue-in-cheek pop (The Great Escape).
Both made an unusual, but well-received transitional record - OK Computer vs Blur's self-titled.
Both feature plenty of electronica, something largely unexpected.
Both may have alienated an old fanbase, but attracted a new one that greatly prefers this (see Severian's dismissal of Parklife*).
*No offense intended; just using you as an example.
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I mentioned in an earlier comment that both Kid A and 13, as well as a handful of other albums from a 2-3 year span, have similar themes of disintegration, alienation, anxiety in the face of increased individualism, at the same time a loss of identity in an increasingly mechanised and computerised world, a general kicking against Fukuyama's 'end of history', even a sense of a lost utopian era as conceived by Derrida and Mark Fisher. That's why some have suggested that Kid A captures the zeitgeist of the post 9/11 world, even though it came out beforehand... this stuff was in the air well beforehand.