Michael Jackson released Off the Wall.
Magazine released their second album, Secondhand Daylight.
Marianne Faithfull married Ben Brierly of The Vibrators and recorded her comeback album Broken English.
Maureen McGovern saw the release of the single “Can You Read My Mind,” which she’d recorded for the Superman soundtrack (1978).
Maxine Nightingale released the hit single “Lead Me On.”
Marilynne Robinson was preparing to publish Housekeeping (1980); it would be a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Marshall McLuhan, who had recently appeared in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977), was nearing the end of his life (he would die on 31 December 1980, from complications from a stroke).
Mary Higgins Clark was preparing to publish her fourth novel, The Cradle Will Fall (1980).
Mary Oliver published the chapbook Sleeping in the Forest.
“Sleeping in the Forest”
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
Maxine Chernoff published Utopia TV Store.
McFadden & Whitehead scored their biggest hit with “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.”
Meat Loaf was still releasing singles from his sleeper hit, Bat Out of Hell (1977).
Melissa Manchester had a hit single with her cover of Peter Allen’s “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
Michael Johnson, who had recently scored hits with “Bluer Than Blue” and his cover of “Almost Like Being in Love” (both 1978)…
…reached the charts again with his recording of Bill LaBounty’s “This Night Won’t Last Forever.”
Michael Ondaatje published his anthology There’s a Trick with a Knife I’m Learning to Do: Poems, 1963-1978.
Midnight Oil released their second full-length album, Head Injuries.
Mike Oldfield, who had recently released Incantations (1978)…
…released both Platinum and the live album Exposed.
Milan Kundera published The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
The Israeli group Milk and Honey, performing with Gali Atari, won the Eurovision Song Contest 1979 with “Hallelujah.”
Minnie Riperton released Minnie.
She died from breast cancer two months later.
Mordecai Richler was preparing to publish Joshua Then and Now (1980).
Morrissey-Mullen released their popular instrumental cover of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (a hit single from 1978).
Motörhead began to find popular success with their releases Overkill and Bomber…
…which prompted United Artists to finally release their debut album, On Parole, which they’d recorded in 1976.
The band disowned the album.
Muddy Waters, who was in the middle of a comeback, won a Grammy for I’m Ready (1978)…
…and released Muddy “Mississippi” Waters—Live, which would win another Grammy the following year.
He would pass away in 1983.
Monty Python released Life of Brian.
