After she and Mark Brydon dissolved their electronic music duo Moloko, Murphy began working with producer and musician Matthew Herbert.

The album often samples sounds made by everyday objects and actions, including cosmetics, brass mice, dancing and ornaments.

Ruby Blue received positive reviews from music critics and peaked at number 88 on the UK Albums Chart.

[14] The instruments, primarily brass and woodwinds,[3] are layered over sampled noises such as alarm clocks, a water cooler, hairspray and helmets.

[3] Following "Sinking Feeling", which uses a beat constructed from clicking sounds,[17] is "Night of the Dancing Flame", which combines synthesisers with 1920s jazz.

[19] After opening with noises such as rustling and coughing,[18] the longest track "Through Time" proceeds into a ballad that was compared to those by Carole King.

The song uses a metaphor of rain and harvests to describe love and sex,[21] atop a baroque pop brass arrangement.

[16] "Dear Diary" is a torch song mixing Northern soul with disco music[17] with the sounds of doorbells and telephones ringing.

[12] Heather Phares of AllMusic wrote that "Murphy keeps the alluring sensuality and unpredictable quirks that made Moloko unique, without sounding like she's rehashing where she's already been".

[17] Dan Raper of PopMatters praised the album as "one of the best examples of production shaping but not overwhelming the artist's vision".

[16] The Guardian's John Burgess agreed, stating that because of Herbert's production, Murphy sounded "sonically enticing and varied [...] at times sultry, rude, powerful and tender across white noise, waltz time signatures and jazz sass", but was mixed on the album overall, adding that the pair "often let their noodling eclipse the songs, leaving few you'll actually be able to sing back to anyone.

"[19] Pitchfork's Mark Richardson remarked that "it's hard to imagine anyone not ranking this is [sic] the best thing Murphy has ever done" and that "when the songwriting is on, Ruby Blue seems perfect, the ultimate combination of human warmth and technological know-how.

The show's music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas, stated that she had been a fan of Moloko and gave Ruby Blue a positive review.

Contestants wore costumes and make-up to show them as zombies in a performance combining the 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead with Michael Jackson's 1983 music video for "Thriller".

[31] All tracks are written by Róisín Murphy and Matthew HerbertCredits adapted from liner notes of Ruby Blue.