The 1990s File Feature
What Will I Do
What Will I Do: Timmy T. and the 1990 Hot 100 Timmy T. is the recording name of Timothy Tench, a California-based singer who became associated with a particu…
01 The Story
What Will I Do: Timmy T. and the 1990 Hot 100
Timmy T. is the recording name of Timothy Tench, a California-based singer who became associated with a particular strain of freestyle and Latin-influenced R&B pop that found commercial success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His career is best known for the single "One More Try," which reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991 and became one of the most commercially successful recordings of his era. That achievement gave his name significant recognition in the American pop market, but it came after a period of earlier recording activity that included the 1990 single "What Will I Do."
"What Will I Do" was released in 1990, during a period when Timmy T. was developing his commercial profile through recordings on the Quality label. The single represented the kind of romantic ballad that his production team and label were developing as the foundation of his commercial approach. His voice, a smooth, expressive tenor with a tone well suited to emotionally direct ballad material, was the primary commercial asset, and the productions built around it aimed to maximize its appeal to audiences for contemporary dance-pop and freestyle.
The freestyle genre, which had emerged from the urban Latino communities of New York and Miami in the mid-1980s, blended electronic dance production with romantic and emotionally direct lyrical content, often delivered by vocalists with strong melodic abilities. By 1990, freestyle had achieved significant crossover into mainstream pop, and artists working in adjacent spaces, combining freestyle's emotional directness with softer production textures appropriate for radio crossover, found a viable commercial path in the marketplace.
The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on July 21, 1990, debuting at position 98. The following week, July 28, it climbed to its peak of number 96. The single then held that position for two additional weeks, on August 4 and August 11, 1990, before departing the chart. The four-week run at position 96 was a modest chart showing, but the consistency of the charting indicated that the single was generating steady airplay and sales activity, even if not sufficient to propel it into more prominent chart territory.
The summer of 1990 was a competitive moment in the pop marketplace, with significant commercial activity across multiple genres. The Hot 100 was heavily contested, and singles without immediate strong momentum often found it difficult to climb significantly from their debut positions. "What Will I Do" held its position steadily rather than advancing, suggesting that its commercial support was consistent but limited in geographic reach or format penetration.
Timmy T.'s subsequent commercial breakthrough with "One More Try" demonstrated that the commercial foundation being built during the 1990 period had indeed established a meaningful audience for his work. The number 1 achievement of that later single gave retrospective context to earlier efforts like "What Will I Do," confirming that the artist's recording activity during this period was building toward a genuine commercial peak.
The Quality label, which released Timmy T.'s recordings during this period, was a regional independent operation that had developed relationships with distributors capable of generating national chart activity. The label's ability to generate a Hot 100 entry for "What Will I Do" demonstrated a working promotional infrastructure even if the scale of that infrastructure limited how high the single could climb.
The freestyle and Latin-pop crossover genre that Timmy T. occupied was one of the more interesting commercial spaces of the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing on the production aesthetics of electronic dance music while retaining the melodic and emotional accessibility of pop ballads. Recordings from this period document a distinctive moment in American popular music when electronic production tools and Latin musical sensibilities were finding new ways to connect with mainstream audiences, a development that would have significant consequences for the direction of pop music through the following decades.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Emotional Territory in What Will I Do
"What Will I Do" addresses the fundamental question of loss and dependency in romantic relationships, a theme that has been at the center of popular song since the genre's beginnings. The title itself is a direct expression of helplessness, a question posed in the face of a romantic ending or the threat of one, asking what remains of a person's life and sense of self when a central relationship is absent or threatened. This is emotionally direct territory that connects to one of the deepest veins of romantic expression in popular music.
Timmy T.'s vocal approach was central to how this theme was communicated. His smooth, expressive tenor gave the material an intimate quality that suited the emotional content, creating the sense that the question being asked was genuine and personal rather than conventionalized or formulaic. The ability to make a familiar emotional situation feel immediate and specific was a key skill for ballad performers in any era, and Timmy T.'s vocal style was well suited to this task.
The freestyle and Latin-influenced pop tradition within which his recordings operated had developed particular conventions for handling romantic loss. The genre's emotional directness, inherited from the soul and R&B traditions that informed freestyle's development, meant that songs in this mode typically did not obscure or complicate their central emotional content with irony or ambiguity. The question "what will I do" was meant to land with its full emotional weight, inviting listeners to inhabit the emotional position the narrator describes.
The theme of romantic dependency in songs like "What Will I Do" engages with a psychologically recognizable state: the experience of having organized one's emotional world around another person such that the loss of that person creates a fundamental disorientation. Popular music has explored this state from multiple angles across many decades, and songs that address it effectively connect with listeners' own experiences of similar states, providing a musical form for feelings that can be difficult to articulate in other ways.
The production aesthetic that surrounded Timmy T.'s recordings in 1990 contributed to the thematic delivery. Smooth, melodically accessible arrangements with clear rhythmic foundations and warm synthesizer textures created an emotional environment that was simultaneously contemporary and accessible to listeners across demographic categories. This balance of stylistic currency and emotional universality was the core commercial proposition of the freestyle-influenced pop ballad in this era.
The question format of the song title is itself a significant formal choice. A title that poses a question rather than making a statement positions the listener differently than a declarative title does. The question invites the listener to supply their own answer, creating a more participatory relationship between the song and its audience. This participation was particularly effective in romantic ballad contexts, where listeners were often drawn to songs that articulated questions they themselves had experienced without resolution.
The summer 1990 pop marketplace was receptive to this kind of emotional directness within a smooth, radio-friendly production framework. Dance-pop, adult contemporary, and urban formats all provided pathways for recordings that combined melodic accessibility with genuine emotional content, and Timmy T.'s work navigated these format contexts effectively, even if the ultimate commercial ceiling for "What Will I Do" proved modest relative to what his subsequent recordings would achieve. The song stands as documentation of an artist and a genre at a moment of productive commercial development, building toward the breakthrough that was still a year away.
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