1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). It is the 1981st year of the Common Era, or A.D.; the 981st year of the 2nd millennium; the 81st year of the 20th century; and the 2nd year of the 1980s decade.

Ricardo Trogi (born March 25, 1970 in Quebec City, Quebec) is a French Canadian filmmaker, director and actor.

Trogi’s first two films, Québec-Montréal, about seven twenty-something travellers driving between the two cities, and Horloge Biologique, a look at three men and their decisions about having children, were both critical and commercial hits, with Quebec-Montréal receiving four Jutra Awards. His third feature titled Mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-un (1981), a semi-autobiographical film about a boy's coming of age, was released in September 2009. In addition to film work, Trogi also directed the 2004-2005 television series Smash.

Randall William Rhoads (December 6, 1956 – March 19, 1982) was an American heavy metal guitarist who played with Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot. A devoted student of classical guitar, Rhoads combined his classical music influences with his own heavy metal style. Despite his short career, Rhoads is a major influence on neo-classical metal, and is cited as an influence by many guitarists and is included in several "Greatest Guitarist" lists.

At age 14, Rhoads formed a cover band called Violet Fox (after his mother's middle name, Violet), with his older brother Kelle on drums. Violet Fox staged several performances in the "Grand Salon" at Musonia, Delores Rhoads' music school. Among their setlist was "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain, and songs from The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper and David Bowie. After the dissolution of Violet Fox, Rhoads taught his best friend Kelly Garni how to play bass, and together they formed a band called The Whore (rehearsing during the day at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a 1970s Hollywood nightspot), spending several months playing at backyard parties around Los Angeles.

Pino Daniele (born 19 March 1955) is an Italian vocalist, composer, and musician, whose influences cover a wide number of genres, fusing pop, blues, jazz, Italian and Middle eastern music into his own unique brand of world music.

Graduating in accounting, Pino began his musical career in the band "Batracomiomachia", then in 1976 he became the bass player with the Napoli Centrale, where he met James Senese. Later in 1976 Claudio Poggi, producer of EMI Italian, listened to a demo tape containing various original tracks by the then young Daniele, deciding to offer a deal with the label. Already mid-year, he recorded a 45-rpm vinyl containing the tracks "Che calore" (originally titled "Ca Calore", being his trademark Neapolitan dialect) and "Fortunato".

"Terra mia", his debut album of 1977 containing tracks from the previous single, demonstrates the singer's deep connection with the Neapolitan and Mediterranean traditions, both in the music and in the lyrics, which sometimes cover songs and popular customs typically Neapolitan. Among the most successful tracks of the album are without doubt "Terra mia", but particularly "Na tazzullella 'e cafè" (A small cup of coffee), highly played by Renzo Arbore on his show "Alto gradimento" (High satisfaction) and "Napule è" (Naples is…), which in time would become a true manifesto for the author (who wrote it at just 18 years of age) and for the entire city of Naples.

Julio Iglesias (born Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva; September 23, 1943) is a Spanish singer and songwriter whose romantic image, magnetic stage presence, and expressive music made him one of the best-selling artists of all time. By the early 21st century he had sold hundreds of millions of albums in more than a dozen languages. He has sold over 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages and released 77 albums. According to Sony Music Entertainment, he is one of the top 15 best-selling music artists in history. While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads, his success has continued on as he entered new musical endeavors. He is the father of singer Enrique Iglesias.

Iglesias was born in Madrid, the eldest son of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat. Iglesias' father's family was from Galicia, and Iglesias' mother an Andalusian.

In the 1960s, he studied law in Madrid and was a goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's football teams. On September 22, 1963, he was involved in a car crash, resulting in an injury to his spinal cord. He said, "I had a car accident; [a] very, very strange car accident...I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call 'paraparexia,' which is not paraplegia. It's a compression in the [spinal] cord, in the sense of the neck...my spinal cord; and I was very, very ill for three years."  His doctors thought he would never walk again; indeed, his legs were left permanently weakened, and they continued to require therapy as of late October 2010. However, slowly, he began recovering his health. To develop and increase the dexterity of his hands, he began playing guitar. When he recovered from his accident, he resumed academic studies and traveled to the United Kingdom to study the English language, first in Ramsgate, then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.