10 Musical Shifts That No One Saw Coming

You have to have a lot of guts to be able to pull a bait and switch on your audience. Even though it might look like career suicide to go from one genre to the next, the best artists in the world have to have a lot of faith in their new direction to get any of their fans onboard with a new sound. Compared to where Radiohead was at the end of the '90s though, Kid A feels like getting the coldest reality check possible.

After the success of Ok Computer, the band were on their way to being one of the defining rock acts of their generation, only to come out with an album full of experimental rock pieces and electronic soundscapes. Although you did hear some electronic music here and there on the previous album, this was them making their sound so sanitized that it almost felt artificial when you heard it.

Even though this was a prime time for them to fall on their faces, this became the transcendent album that broadened the playing field for the band, leading to songs that sounded both robotic and insanely emotional at the same time like Everything In Its Right Place and Idioteque. Whereas Ok Computer was the record that tied up the '90s alternative scene perfectly, Kid A is a peek into what rock and roll was going to be like in the next century.