Ride It (Geri Halliwell song)

Critical reception

Critical response towards "Ride It" was mixed. Matt Potter from Yahoo! Launch gave the single two out of ten stars, and said "Enter Halliwell, and her latest attempt to present herself as a sexy siren, all attitude and independence. It's not as if it's a bad song, either - think "Life Is A Roller Coaster", crossed with "Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves" but minus a proper chorus - but the steely, tears-at-a-hen-party desperation of Halliwell's delivery makes this the musical equivalent of getting the eighteenth call in one evening from a girl you met once at a party".

Chart performance

Strong competition from Girls Aloud, Destiny's Child and Lemar resulted in a final chart position of number four in the UK Singles Chart, from a midweek position of number two, with 19,196 copies sold in its first week. "Ride It" went on to sell 55,142 copies and became the 143rd best selling single of 2004. "Ride It" was commercially successful in the rest of Europe. It peaked at number two in Russia, number four in UK, reaching number three on the Belgium, Spain and Scotland Charts.

Music video

The accompanying music video for the song was directed by Luca Tommassini and shot in Milan in September 2004. In it, Halliwell dresses as a policegirl and spanks a male model with a truncheon before flashing her bra. She also sticks the truncheon between the man's legs. There is also a close-up of lifting her pink dress and shaking her bottom. TV executives were worried the video would be too sexual for Top of the Pops Saturday viewers, which was watched by six to 12 year olds. The BBC then censored the video, saying: "TOTP Saturday will air Geri's video without a couple of unsuitable shots".

Live performances

To promote the single, Halliwell performed the song on Children in Need, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Top of the Pops, CD:UK, GMTV, Ministry of Mayhem and This Morning.