text: 11 January – BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read announces on air that he will not play the single "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood because of its suggestive lyrics. The BBC places a total ban on the record at about the same time.
  21 January – "Relax" reaches number one in the UK singles chart, despite the BBC ban; it will spend a total of 42 weeks in the Top 40.
  14 February – Elton John marries studio engineer Renate Blauel.
  1 March – Sting plays his last concerts with the Police at the end of the Synchronicity tour; the band takes a "pause" after the tour and only play a few special events together after this until 2007, when they organise a reunion tour.
  5 April – Michael Tippet's large scale choral work The Mask of Time for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra is performed for the first time at the Symphony Hall, Boston. The work was commissioned to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
  1 May – Mick Fleetwood files for bankruptcy in the United States.
  19 July – The first performance of Peter Racine Fricker’s String Quartet No 3, op 73, written between 1974 and 1976, takes place at the Cheltenham Festival, performed by the Chilingirian Quartet.