Passion is the third studio album by English singer Geri Halliwell. It was released on 6 June 2005 by Innocent Records.
Two singles were released from the album: "Ride It", which peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart and number three on the Spanish and Scottish charts; and "Desire", which charted at number 22 in the UK.
The album received mixed reviews from critics and was a commercial disappointment, peaking at number 41 with 5,432 copies sold and charting for only one week on the UK Albums Chart. After one year of release, sales had reached 10,000 in the UK.
Background
Halliwell wrote many songs between 2001 and 2004 with a number of producers. Halliwell wanted to record the track "Some Girls" (written by Richard X and Hannah Robinson) for the album, but the track was instead given to Rachel Stevens.
Halliwell described the album as "a journey through a range of extreme emotions from passion and love through to fear and hope". According to her, Passion can be seen to chart her development as both a vocalist and songwriter. For the singer it had been a matter of "finding out who I am not as much as I what I am. I think this album catches me at a real transitional point as a songwriter".
Promotion
A documentary promoting Passion, titled There's Something About Geri, was premiered by Channel 5 on 15 May 2005. It covered her life and career and following her from Moscow to Milan and Britain as she prepares for a relaunch of her singing career. The documentary attracted an audience of 1.1 million viewers, garnering above-average Sunday ratings for the network. Despite rating success, it was criticised by the media for showing a "self-obsessed, painfully vain little girl in need of constant mollycoddling". She regretted doing the documentary film, commenting, "I shouldn't have done it! Even thinking about it makes me cringe!"
Singles
"Ride It" was released on 22 November 2004 by Innocent Records as the first single from the album. "Ride It" was commercially successful, peaking at number four in the UK, number three in Spain and Scotland.
"Desire" was released on 30 May 2005 as the album's second and final single. It peaked at number 22 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the lowest-peaking single of Halliwell's solo career to date.
| rev2 = entertainment.ie
| rev2score =
| rev3 = Hot Press
| rev3score = mixed
| rev4 = The Guardian
| rev4score =
| rev5 = Now
| rev5score =
| rev6 = Yahoo! Music
| rev6score =
Passion received generally mixed reviews from music critics. John Lucas from AllMusic wrote that the album was an improvement over her previous record, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster. Generally, the uptempo, dance-pop tracks and ballads were praised while more criticism was given to the jazzier songs such as the title track. In particular, critics were complimentary towards the track "Love Never Loved Me", with Kraines calling it a "standout" and Lucas describing it as "possibly the best thing she has ever done outside of the Spice Girls".