The Black Box member Daniele Davioli described "Ride on Time" as an attempt to create a dance track with the power of a rock song.

After the copyright owners took legal action, the single was reissued with rerecorded vocals by Heather Small, who later became famous as the vocalist of M People.

"Ride on Time" has appeared in critics' lists of the best house tracks, and in 2020 The Guardian named it one of the greatest UK number ones.

[7] Davoli said that as Italian rock music was not taken seriously, "Ride on Time" was the group's attempt to create a song with the power of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple with a dance beat.

[8] In New York City, Davoli bought a 12-inch a cappella copy of "Love Sensation", a 1980 single by Loleatta Holloway, planning to use it to create mashups.

[7] Black Box showed "Ride on Time" to numerous Italian record labels, but none were interested, feeling it did not match their markets.

[8] Davoli said the labels were more interested in hi-NRG records in the style of the British producers Stock Aitken Waterman, which they felt was dated.

[8] Shortly after the track was finished, the British DJs Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling visited Italy looking for Italo house music.

Instead, Deconstruction licensed "Ride on Time" and released it with no promotion, competing with the imported copies arriving in UK record stores.

[8] Within a week of Small recording the vocal, Deconstruction withdrew the single and released a new version on the Ride on Time (Remix) EP.

[8] For their performance on the British music series Top of the Pops, Black Box hired the model Katrin Quinol to mime the vocals, as "none of us three blokes from Italy would be convincing replacements for Loleatta Holloway".

[20][21] Phil Cheeseman of Record Mirror wrote that "Ride on Time" was "splendid and instantly catchy ... Black Box have understood perfectly the piano-driven rhythms of Chicago and moulded them into a Euro-shape.

[23] Reviewing Dreamland for Melody Maker, Andrew Smith wrote that the sampled vocals of "Ride on Time" were irritating.

[24][25] In 1993, NME named "Ride on Time" the third-best "Euro-hit", describing it as the "ultimate Italian house shouter" and "quintessential Europop".

The trappings of Italo house – light, sequenced keyboard lines, bouncy bass, endless hi-hat all working in unison to give that gorgeous piano its lift – seemed to be on a hundred hits that summer, and the vocal hooks made this the biggest.

"[29] In 2011, the journalist James Masterton wrote that Small's replacement vocal was "almost comically bad", with a noticeable Manchester accent.

[14] Fact included "Ride on Time" in its 2014 list of "Diva-House Belters That Still Sound Incredible", writing: "Some people see this as a guilty pleasure now.

This is a Terminator of a song, unstoppably delivering a payload of pure euphoria as Chicago house is spliced with Italo disco to create perfect pop.