Charisma Records and Atlantic Records release the 11th album by Genesis, Abacab, featuring the singles “No Reply At All”, “Abacab” and “Man On The Corner”. 
Charisma Records and Atlantic Records release the 11th album by Genesis, Abacab, featuring the singles “No Reply At All”, “Abacab” and “Man On The Corner”.
Mushroom Records releases The Swingers’ album Counting The Beat; the band is led by founding Split Enz frontman Phil Judd.
A&M Records releases the fourth album by The Police, Ghost In The Machine, featuring the singles “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and “Spirits In The Material World”.
Decca Records releases the first solo album by Lindsey Buckingham, Long Distance Voyager, featuring the single “Trouble”.
Mute Records releases the first Depeche Mode album, Speak & Spell, featuring the singles “New Life”, “Dreaming Of Me” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”.
CBS unleashes a particularly virulent strain of Pac-Man Fever into record stores, courtesy of rock group Buckner & Garcia, and there is no cure in sight. With musical odes to the arcade games Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Frogger, Asteroids, Berzerk, Centipede, and even the relatively obscure coin-op Mouse Trap, this album’s release probably marks the high point of the video game industry “boom” – the apex at which public awareness of video games is at the saturation point, having seeped into the rest of pop culture.
The seventh album from Split Enz, Time + Tide, is released to a strong start, going gold within two weeks in Australia alone. With most of the songs written by Tim Finn, the album is surprisingly autobiographical. The album’s lead single, the sea-shanty-styled “Six Months In A Leaky Boat”, is chased off the airwaves by radio program directors when it’s interpreted as a commentary on the Falkland Islands War (despite the fact that the song was written and recorded months before the conflict ever took place).
The Alan Parsons Project releases its sixth album, Eye In The Sky, including the hit singles “Eye In The Sky”.
Capitol Records releases the second Duran Duran album, Rio, featuring the singles “Rio”, “Hungry Like The Wolf”, “Save A Prayer” and “My Own Way”.
Capitol Records releases the 12th album by The Steve Miller Band, Abracadabra, featuring the singles “Abracadabra” and “Cool Magic”.
Warner Bros. Records releases the 13th Fleetwood Mac album, Mirage, the band’s first studio recording since 1979. With the hits “Hold Me”, “Gypsy”, “Can’t Go Back” and “Love In Store”, the album climbs the charts quickly, but the band quickly disperses to solo careers again, not recording any further new material until 1987’s Tango In The Night.
Island Records releases the second solo album by Steve Winwood, Talking Back To The Night, featuring the singles “Still In The Game” and “Valerie”.
IRS Records releases the second Wall Of Voodoo album, Call Of The West, featuring the single “Mexican Radio”.
Geffen Records releases the fourth self-titled Peter Gabriel album, though it’s given a subtitle of Security to avoid confusion with Gabriel’s three previous self-titled albums. The album includes the hit single “Shock The Monkey”.
Mute Records releases the second album by Depeche Mode, A Broken Frame, featuring the singles “See You” and “The Meaning Of Love”.
Warner Bros. Records releases the first solo album by Donald Fagen, The Nightfly, featuring the singles “I.G.Y.” and “New Frontier”.
Columbia Records releases the Journey album Frontiers, featuring the singles “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”, “Send Her My Love” and “Faithfully”.
Electric Light Orchestra bassist and vocalist Kelly Groucutt goes solo, releasing an album of distinctly ELO-esque tunes on the Polygram label. Virtually all of Groucutt’s bandmates appear on his first album, with the notable exception of ELO frontman Jeff Lynne.
I.R.S. Records releases R.E.M.‘s debut album Murmur, featuring the single “Radio Free Europe”.
CBS Records releases the Dave Edmunds solo album Information, featuring the singles “Slipping Away” and “Information” (both produced by Jeff Lynne of ELO fame).
A&M Records releases the fifth and final Police album Synchronicity, featuring the singles “Synchronicity I”, “Synchronicity II”, “Every Breath You Take”, “King Of Pain” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger”.
Electric Light Orchestra‘s ninth album, the science fiction/time travel concept album Secret Messages, is released, featuring the single “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is King”. Originally a double album (slated to include the legendary lost song “Beatles Forever”), Secret Messages is pared down to a single LP late in production, and the resulting orphaned tracks become the source of most of the group’s unreleased songs for several box sets to come.
Recording solo material with elements of funk, R&B and reggae that he deemed unsuitable for the band that made him famous, Split Enz, Tim Finn releases his first solo album, Escapade. Slightly more in line with mainstream musical tastes than Split Enz’s usual quirky output, Escapade quickly makes the top ten – and goes platinum – in Australia, where it is first released.
POlygram Records releases the Big Country album The Crossing, featuring the singles “In A Big Country” and “Fields of Fire”.
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab releases Andrew Powell’s elaborately-titled cover album Andrew Powell and the Philharmonia Orchestra Play the Best of the Alan Parsons Project, featuring new orchestral arrangements of the Project’s back catalog devised by Powell (who also arranges the orchestral components of the Project’s recordings).
RCA releases the Hall & Oates compilation album Greatest Hits: Rock & Soul, Part I, featuring the singles “Say It Isn’t So” and “Adult Education”.
The eighth album from Split Enz, Conflicting Emotions, is released. Despite the catchy single “Strait Old Line”, the album doesn’t sell as well is the group’s previous three albums (perhaps a side-effect of lower exposure due to the previous album’s lead single being artificially strangled by radio programmers). This is the last album to feature founding member Tim Finn; his younger brother Neil elects to keep the band together to continue recording.
The Alan Parsons Project releases its seventh album, Ammonia Avenue, including the singles “Prime Time” and “Don’t Answer Me”.
Scotti Bros. Records releases “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s second album, In 3-D, featuring the singles “Eat It” and “I Lost On Jeopardy”.
I.R.S. Records releases R.E.M.‘s second album, Reckoning.