She admitted recently that she realises now that this would have been a hit had she decided to release it. I'm sure she said during a Q&A that one of her regrets during her solo years was not launching the Passion era with LNLM. From what I know it was written for the shelved Disco Sister Music 'concept' album which was supposed to be an album of uptempo disco tracks before she has a disagreement with the record company who told her to go back and record some more contemporary sounding tracks - Desire being one of them.
Her reasons for not wanting it to be released are typical 'Geri'. Initially she claimed it felt too personal to be released as a single as it was a song about never finding love and being eternally single; she also claimed at one point that she felt it was a 'patchwork quilt' of a song as it was an amalgamation of several attempts at songwriting from over the years - the middle-eight in LNLM was actually taken from the first song she wrote and recorded pre-Spice Girls, and she said when it came to writing LNLM she couldn't be bothered to think up anything for the middle-eight so she suggested some old lyrics. I'm pretty sure she also claimed she didn't want to be 'dancing around in hotpants in a video' when she was still suffering with her bulimia and body dysmorphia althogh that's pretty much what she ended up doing in the Ride It video.
All that aside, Love Never Loved Me remains one of her best songs and handled correctly at the time could have been one of her biggest hits. I'm not entirely sure the public were completely fed up with her by 2004, Ride It reached #4 after all and while it's good it's nothing outstanding, and had this have had a big budget video, some decent performances and promotion I'm sure the Passion era would have ended differently.
10/10.