01 The Story

The Pointer Sisters' "Should I Do It": A Forgotten Dance-Pop Gem That Reached Number 13

The Pointer Sisters were one of the most genre-fluid acts in American pop history, moving with apparent ease between country, R&B, dance pop, and new wave influences across a career that began in Oakland, California, in the early 1970s. "Should I Do It," released in early 1982 on Planet Records, arrived during one of the most commercially successful periods of the group's long run and demonstrated their particular gift for finding the precise tone that adult contemporary and dance radio formats required simultaneously.

The group's commercial renaissance had begun in 1978 with their Bruce Springsteen cover "Fire," which reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and accelerated through the early 1980s with a run of singles that placed them at the forefront of the new wave-influenced pop sound developing out of Los Angeles. By 1981, the trio of Ruth Pointer, Anita Pointer, and June Pointer (the group had reduced from a quartet when Bonnie Pointer pursued a solo career in 1977) had recorded "Slow Hand," which would reach number two on the Hot 100 later that year.

"Should I Do It" was produced by Richard Perry, who had also produced the group's breakthrough work in the late 1970s and whose commercial instincts had helped shape the Pointer Sisters sound into something that worked across multiple radio formats simultaneously. Perry's production approach on this track leaned into the early 1980s synthesizer-funk hybrid that was emerging from the intersection of dance music and mainstream pop, giving the record a rhythmic urgency that suited both dance floor and radio play.

The song was written by Tom Snow and Cynthia Weil, one of the most successful songwriting partnerships working in commercial pop during the period. Weil had been a cornerstone of the Brill Building songwriting tradition alongside her husband Barry Mann, and her collaboration with Snow produced material that understood both the emotional requirements of pop songwriting and the rhythmic demands of contemporary dance formats. Their work with the Pointer Sisters on "Should I Do It" resulted in one of the group's most distinctively transitional records, sitting at the precise boundary between the glossy soul of the late 1970s and the more synthetic pop sound that would dominate the following years.

On the Billboard Hot 100, "Should I Do It" debuted at position 82 on January 23, 1982, and climbed consistently through the winter and spring chart cycle. It reached its peak of number 13 on April 3, 1982, spending a total of 16 weeks on the chart. That 16-week chart run was notably extended and reflected the record's sustained appeal on multiple formats, including dance radio and adult contemporary alongside the mainstream Hot 100 presence. The song also performed strongly on the Billboard R&B Singles chart, confirming the Pointer Sisters' continued credibility with Black radio audiences even as their sound became increasingly pop-oriented.

The Pointer Sisters were in the process during this period of building what would become their most commercially successful album, Break Out, released in 1983. That record would eventually yield three consecutive top-five singles including "Jump (For My Love)," which reached number three, and "Automatic," which reached number five. "Should I Do It" can be understood as an important transitional record in that arc, demonstrating the group's growing command of the synthesizer-inflected sound that Break Out would bring to its commercial peak.

The track appeared during an extraordinarily fertile period for female vocal groups and for dance-pop crossover recordings more generally. The early 1980s saw the genres converge in a way that created commercial opportunities for acts who could navigate multiple chart formats, and the Pointer Sisters proved to be among the most skilled navigators of that particular commercial and artistic landscape. "Should I Do It" remains a well-regarded entry in their catalog precisely because it demonstrates that navigational skill in concentrated form.

02 Song Meaning

Desire and Deliberation: The Emotional Stakes of "Should I Do It"

"Should I Do It" places its entire dramatic weight on a single moment of decision. The title is the question, and the song is the space in which the narrator tries to answer it, turning the conventional pop lyric inside out by making the deliberation itself the subject rather than the resolution. The Pointer Sisters perform this material with a vocal confidence that creates an interesting counterpoint to the lyrical uncertainty: the singing is assured even when the words are not.

The song is structured around the tension between desire and prudence, between what the narrator wants to do and what she knows she should perhaps refrain from doing. This is a timeless romantic situation, the moment of potential commitment or action where the emotional stakes are high enough that the choice feels consequential rather than casual. The production's dance-floor urgency, with its insistent rhythmic pulse, creates a sonic environment that argues for surrender to desire even as the lyric holds the question open.

There is a significant dimension of female agency encoded in the song's structure. The narrator is not waiting for someone else to decide; she is the one with the decision in her hands. This positions the song within a tradition of pop records in which women are the active agents of their own romantic lives rather than the passive recipients of male pursuit or attention. The Pointer Sisters were particularly well suited to this kind of material, having built much of their identity around performances of confident, self-aware femininity that refused the submissive postures common in mainstream pop of earlier decades.

The co-writer Cynthia Weil's influence is discernible in the song's willingness to take the narrator's emotional complexity seriously. Where a simpler lyric might have resolved the question in either direction and presented the resolution as a triumphant conclusion, "Should I Do It" maintains the ambivalence as its permanent condition. The narrator does not definitively answer the question during the song's runtime, which means that the listener's imagination must supply the resolution and thereby becomes invested in the outcome.

The song also participates in the early 1980s pop preoccupation with the relationship between physical desire and emotional risk. The dance-pop production by Richard Perry places the body's response to desire in the foreground, while the lyric foregrounds the mind's attempt to evaluate that response. The interplay between these two registers, the body that wants to move and the mind that wants to think, is what gives the record its particular energy.

In retrospect, "Should I Do It" reads as a song that took the Pointer Sisters' creative sensibility seriously at a moment when the group's commercial instincts and artistic values were most fully aligned. The question at its center is one without a clean answer, which is precisely why it has continued to resonate with listeners who recognize in it the irreducible uncertainty that accompanies any significant romantic choice.