Written, performed and produced by its two members Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr, it appeared as the third track on their debut album Electronic in May 1991 and was also a promotional single in the United States.

Combining electric guitars with a bouncy synthesiser riff, "Tighten Up" is representative of the Electronic album.

When issued as a promo in the USA it reached #6 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Writing in Melody Maker, Paul Lester described the song as "the devastating marriage of Smiths guitars and New Order technology that nervously excited fans the globe over were anticipating from Electronic.

[2] In Vox Keith Cameron wrote: "'Tighten Up' gives Marr a chance to relive The Smiths' halcyon days with an exhilarating semi-acoustic dynamism".