Songfacts®:

• While Bobby Caldwell had a career spanning 30 years, this was his only Top 40 single and the song he's best remembered for. Caldwell wrote "What You Won't Do for Love" for his debut album after he'd recorded the other songs and his manager told him there was no evident hit.
  
  In the song, Caldwell lets his girl know he's just nuts about her. People spend their whole lives looking for love and will do just about anything to get it; he's grateful that he's found it in her.
• Bobby Caldwell is the jazz artist most noted for being white yet sounding African-American. It got to the point where his label tried to hide the fact that he was white.
  
  Caldwell is also far more popular in Japan, of all places. There's no clear explanation for this, any more than for why David Hasselhoff is huge in Germany.
• Artists to cover this song include Phyllis Hyman, Go West, Michael Bolton, and Victor Wooten. It was also part of the soundtrack for the 1997 crime-drama film Donnie Brasco.
• "What You Won't Do for Love" is a good example of the "quiet storm" sub-genre. Quiet storm is a kind of slow, extra-smooth jazz meant to be played late-night on radio stations - the idea is that the music should go well with either coming home from a night on the town or a graveyard shift at work.
• This was brought to the attention of a new audience when a commercial for the 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander revived the smooth soul tune.
• "What You Won't Do for Love" went viral on TikTok in 2024 thanks to a trend where users film food items and other things they love set to the song's horn riff.