One person’s view: “It sounds like he turned on his Casio, hit the ‘demo’ button, and started recording.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view: 1.66 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1991
If 1985 represented the peak of overproduction, commercialization, and Icarus-like ambition in #1 singles, the success of Timmy T’s “One More Try” in 1991 marked the peak of the opposing trends that followed. A typical 1985 hit like “We Built This City” was created by a team of songwriters and musicians who combined decades of experience. “One More Try” was the product of one man: a locksmith from Fresno who had taught himself to play a second-hand keyboard. A 1985 hit such as “We Are the World” could have bold and unrealistic goals, like attempting to end hunger in Africa. The goal of “One More Try” was to win back the love of a gas station cashier named Cindy, which was also unrealistic but not jabbing-your-finger-in-the-face-of-God unrealistic. Many hits from 1985 were heard in motion pictures. “One More Try” was mostly just heard on Cindy’s Walkman, until Timmy T mailed tapes of his music to radio stations and got signed by a small Canadian indie label.
There’s no debate that “One More Try” sounds like the cheaply produced record that it is. There’s also no debate that Timmy T is not among the world’s great singers. His range on “One More Try” is barely more than an octave, and his voice is so ordinary that he may as well be just some guy working in an office somewhere. With a bit of searching you can find entire threads of discussion proclaiming the awfulness of this song, and bemoaning the fact that Timmy T has more #1 hits than Bob Dylan, Green Day, Nirvana, James Brown, and Led Zeppelin combined. However, not everyone thinks that “One More Try” is one of the worst chart-toppers of its era. Tom Breihan gave it a positive review in his Stereogum column, observing that the “hopelessness” in Timmy T’s vocal delivery is “terribly compelling.” Timmy was feeling genuine pain from the whole Cindy situation, and he wanted the rest of us to experience it too.
Like Breihan, I’m going to take the minority viewpoint on this one. “One More Try” is a simple and heartfelt song that doesn’t need an orchestra or an operatic tenor to get its point across. While it’s almost as amateurish as “Hangin’ Tough”, that actually works in its favor to some extent. Plus, the freestyle-influenced synth part gives it more character than most of the other ballads of the early 1990s. Too bad no one asked Timmy T to spruce up snoozefests like “Because I Love You” and Surface’s “The First Time” with his garage sale Moog.
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the improbability of Timmy’s accomplishment. I can’t think of any other person up until that point who wrote, performed, and produced a #1 single with so little creative help from anyone else. Timmy T needed to be the ultimate do-it-yourselfer because Fresno wasn’t exactly teeming with musical geniuses who could mentor him. Kevin Federline was living nearby but was only 12 years old and not yet in a position to share his once-in-a-generation talent.
A look at Timmy T’s Twitter feed reveals that many of the “bad” #1 hits of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s are now intertwined with one another in popular culture. Timmy has performed freestyle shows on the same bill as Stevie B and the woman from Will to Power. He has posted pictures of himself with Tiffany, Tommy Page, and Vanilla Ice. He also has some kind of a feud with Richard Marx, but who doesn’t? Whenever a remote tribe from the Amazon makes initial contact with our civilization, the first thing it does is get into a quarrel with Richard Marx.
Squirrels are something that Timmy T has no quarrel with at all. He sometimes shares videos of the bushy-tailed rodents sitting in his hand or riding on his shoulder in his car. Maybe now we understand why “One More Try” wasn’t enough to convince Cindy to stick around. Women don’t like when they find strange hairs on their man, especially when those hairs are accompanied by fleas.
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