Songfacts®:

• In 1974, Barry White married R&B singer Glodean James while he already had a wife... sort of. "I always told my lady before she became my wife, 'I have two wives, and one of them came before you did,'" White told Billboard. That "wife" was his music. A year later, he wrote this sensual tune about loving his lady all night long, only that lady wasn't Glodean, but his career. "What Am I Gonna Do With You" was his fifth Top 10 single on the Hot 100 since he released his 1973 debut album, I've Got So Much To Give, and White couldn't believe his hot streak.
  
  "My success was so high," he explained. "You ever had somebody so good to you, you say, 'Man what am I gonna do with you?' That's what I was saying to that lady called music... That was my way of telling her thank you for so much. To be that young and have all of that from a person who came from nothing."
• White borrowed the "rup-dup-de-dup" trill at the end of the song from Billy Stewart's hit 1966 rendition of "Summertime." "All the things that you hear in your life can appear again, and because it's old, it becomes new," White explained. "I use Nat King Cole tricks, Jesse Belvin tricks, Marvin Gaye tricks, Billy Stewart tricks, and my own."
• This was also a #1 hit on the R&B chart.
• This was used in the 2013 movie The Love Punch, starring Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan.