Ward reteamed with previous collaborators Rami Yacoub, Arnthor Birgisson and Savan Kotecha to work on most of the material.

Additional producers on the album include Jonas Jeberg, Cutfather, AJ Junior, and Ryan Tedder.

Times Online gave the album three out of five stars, stating "With chart battles involving producers rather than artists, poor Ward finds himself fighting it out with the big budget likes of Justin Timberlake in the sweet voice stakes.

"[5] Similarly, AllMusic editor Sharon Mawer noted that Breathless was "vastly different" from Ward's debut album and found that much of the "uptempo R&B numbers" were "more akin to Justin Timberlake.

"[8] Nick Levine from Digital Spy felt that "large portions of Breathless, they're crippled by the dry, stale whiff of anonymity.

Music UK wrote that "the overwhelming fact about ##Breathless## is that not one of these songs will be around long enough for next year's X Factor auditionees to bother learning them.

[9] It debuted at number two in the UK Albums Chart selling 95,801 in its first week, being held off by Lewis[9][10] On 31 October 2007, an official Breathless DVD, which included exclusive interviews and five music videos, was released via Woolworths stores in the UK, and by the end of the year, Breathless had reached 5× Platinum in Ireland.