Following the promotional cycles for the band's The Facts of Life (2000) and musician Luke Haines' The Oliver Twist Manifesto (2001), they started working on their next album.

[5] By this stage, with two solo releases in the pipeline, Haines considered retiring from the music industry, before switching focus to the next Black Box Recorder album.

Him and bandmate John Moore set about to create an electronic album "with Hank Marvin guitars", though this latter aspect was soon dropped when Haines acquired a piece of equipment that he dubbed the "DJ machine".

[6] In July 2001, around the promotion for his solo album The Oliver Twist Manifesto (2001), Haines planned a week-long boycott against BBC Radio 1,[7] dubbed "Pop Strike".

[12] AllMusic reviewer Andy Kellman said there was "increasingly ornate arrangements" as the band shift their sound to dance-pop,[13] which recalled the work of Pet Shop Boys[14] and Saint Etienne.

[15] In a review for Blender, journalist Andrew Harrison wrote that for the band, pop music entails "honeyed synthesizer melodies acting as a Trojan horse" for the lyrics.

[16] The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis wrote that the chord progressions were inspired by French chanson music, aided by softly "plucked acoustic guitars, [and] hazy electronics".

[16] Petridis said the album was "largely concerned with tabloid celebrity" with tracks tackling "manufactured pop bands" and Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!, "who became wildly famous while possessing no discernible talent for anything".

[17] Petridis wrote that with the album's opening track "The School Song", Nixey can be heard "drolly reciting academic cliches", recalling "The Facts of Life".

[17] Uncut staff wrote that Nixey assumes the role of a "bitterly authoritarian schoolmaster responsible for emotionally crippling the nation’s youth",[19] while a children's choir can be heard recounting the band's name.

[6] The staff at The Independent wrote that "British Racing Green" hints at "how the delusions of empire have now shrunk to bourgeois dreams of country cottages and dinky little sports cars".

[27] Discussing the gap of time since their last release, Nixey explained that it had been finished a year after The Facts of Life had come out, with them attempting to get the album from the liquidators since Nude Records collapsed.

[1] The artwork features Nixey, dressed in a bikini, holding a drink as she relaxes by a pool, which has a lifeless body floating in it,[13] who Moore said was their manage Charlie Inskip.

[26] "The School Song" was released as the album's second single on 30 June 2003, featuring a remix titled "Passionoia Megamix" and a live version of "Lord Lucan Is Missing" as the B-sides.

[13] Rolling Stone reviewer Rob Sheffield wrote that "too many Brit bands have been getting all sincere on us, with grim results [...] Fortunately, Black Box Recorder are still on the case, making sardonic art pop with juicy melodies and nasty wit".

[32] Thorpe said underneath the "neat glitz of Black Box Recorder's delivery Passionoia manages to maintain its baroque underbelly",[26] while Idov said the "arrangements [...] are Haines' usual fare-- deceptively cute, a tad on the lazy side, but always memorable".

[14] Jeres said that "unfortunately a lot of the record falls a wee bit flat [...] Add to that the fact that the music is often a tad on the chilly side and you are no longer laughing along with the joke, but feeling more like an outsider".

[33] CMJ New Music Report writer Antonia Santangelo[34] and Chris Lorraine of Seattle Weekly noticed this too, with the latter adding that Nixey can provide "come-hithers in an icy monotone.

[26] Gozdecki noted that where the band's past releases "effectively lampooned the worst aspects of contemporary British life, the objects of his derision on Passionoia scarcely seem worth deriding".

[18] Petridis praised the lyrics as they seemed to be "more intelligent and witty than anything you'll hear this year", but was underwhelmed by the album as a whole as the band's "targets seem softer" and the "shock" factor that dominated England Made Me was missing.