In 2005, the album was also released in Japan in a cardboard sleeve, similar to the original vinyl artwork, also featuring the remastered tracks and five bonus songs that were on the 2003 version.

Songs were performed by Boy George and guest artists Jimmy Somerville, Eve Gallagher, John Grant, Zee Asha, Hollie Cooke and the Melodico Ensemble.

"[14] Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone said that the album "secures lead singer Boy George's place as a blue-eyed soul balladeer in the first rank."

Holden found that it "is by no means a weighty album", but nonetheless "has gobs of emotion plastered as thickly as Boy George's makeup, and ten tunes that stick", and concluded: "Whether you like the band or not, Culture Club is one pop group that matters.

"[11] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote that "George's warm, well-meaning, slightly clumsy croon signifies most effectively when it has the least to say – when it's most purely a medium for his warm, well-meaning, slightly clumsy self", and that "his real aim in life is to reenact the story of the ugly duckling – and to radiate the kind of extreme tolerance that's so often engendered by extreme sexual ambiguity.

He deemed the album "flamboyant, fun, sexy, soulful, colorful, androgynous, and carefree" like other 1980s music, and concluded by calling it "the artistic and commercial pinnacle of a band that still attracted new fans years later.