Obsession

Obsession is the third studio album by English pop singer Shayne Ward. It was released on 15 November 2010 in the United Kingdom, and on 8 February 2011 in the United States. Two retailer exclusive versions of the album will be available, with HMV offering a set of four bonus postcards and Play.com offering signed copies of the album. The album received favourable to average reviews from music critics, who noticed Ward's vocalist qualities, but felt it misses good songs and blamed Simon Cowell and Syco Music for it. It debuted at number 15 in the UK and number 11 in Ireland. In the UK, its first week sales were 22,452. Singles The album was preceded by the lead single "Gotta Be Somebody", a cover version of Nickelback's 2008 song, on 7 November 2010. The album's second single, Obsession, was only released promotionally, being released on the week of 14 February 2011. Ward performed the song on The Alan Titchmarsh Show and The Graham Norton Show on the week of release. The song was also released to radio, and a promotional CD single was issued. The album's third single is a remixed version of 'Must Be A Reason Why', which will be released on 3 October 2011. The single will be released by featured artist J Pearl, with Ward being credited as the featuring artist instead, due to Ward being dropped from his record deal by Simon Cowell, due to poor sales of the album and lead single. Background It was announced in January 2010 that Ward had begun writing his third studio album, with help from American producers RedOne and Taio Cruz. Ward actually worked on the album for about two and a half years, working in several locations in the United States with around 50 producers, as he wanted the album to be different from his first two. Several songs were recorded, including "Oxygen", which was due to be the lead single, "Elevator", a demo of which appears on Ward's official YouTube account, and "Tonight", a duet with Sugababes singer Heidi Range. "Oxygen" was co-written with Danish songwriters Remee and Thomas Troelsen, and was later recorded by Danish pop group Alien Beat Club for their debut album, Diversity (2009). Work continued on the album during the year, with Ward recording further material penned by Savan Kotecha, Quiz & Larossi and Lucas Secon. Work on the album was completed in September 2010, when Ward announced that none of the songs produced by RedOne and Taio Cruz would be included.