Like their first single "Getting Away with It", it features Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys as well as founding members Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner.

[3] Tennant travelled to Manchester to record the lead vocal and a few weeks later went to Paris to attend the final mix of the song by Stephen Hague.

"Disappointed" was conceived just before the recording of New Order's sixth studio album Republic, and was performed live in December 1991 on Electronic's European tour: in Glasgow[4] (sung by Bernard Sumner) and in London (sung by Tennant when Pet Shop Boys guested on three songs).

Although Electronic would enjoy three more top-twenty singles in the United Kingdom, "Disappointed" was the last major commercial success for the band on an international level, becoming a dance chart hit in the United States and reaching the top 20 in Germany as well as number six in the UK, their highest-charting effort there.

Roger Morton of NME was negative in his review, calling the song "effortless in the worse sense" and one that "drifts off into a no man's land of half-hearted disco miserablism".