1980s: Midlife

The 1980s gave Manilow the adult contemporary chart-topping hit songs The Old Songs, Somewhere Down The Road, Read 'Em and Weep and a remake of the 1941 Jule Styne and Frank Loesser standard I Don't Want to Walk Without You. Manilow continued having high radio airplay throughout the decade.

In England, Manilow had five sold-out performances at the Royal Albert Hall, for which nearly a half million people vied for the 21,500 available seats. In the United States, he sold out Radio City Music Hall in 1984 for 10 nights and set a box-office sales record of nearly $2 million, making him the top draw in the then 52-year history of the Music Hall.

In 1980, Manilow's One Voice special, with Dionne Warwick as his guest, was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction.

Also in 1980, a concert from Manilow's sold-out shows at the Wembley Arena was broadcast while he was on a world tour. Manilow released the self-titled Barry (1980), which was his first album to not reach the top ten in the United States, stopping at #15. The album contained I Made It Through The Rain and Bermuda Triangle. We Still Have Time was featured in the 1980 drama Tribute.

The album If I Should Love Again followed in 1981, containing The Old Songs, Let's Hang On and Somewhere Down The Road. This was the first of his own albums that Manilow produced without Ron Dante, who had co-produced all the previous albums.

Manilow's sold-out concert at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was aired nationally on Showtime, and locally on Philadelphia's now-defunct PRISM (a local sports and movie channel).

In 1982, a concert from his sold out Royal Albert Hall show was broadcast in England. The live album and video Barry Live in Britain also came from his Royal Albert Hall shows.

On August 27, 1983, Manilow performed a landmark open air concert at Blenheim Palace in Britain. It was the first such event ever held at that venue and was attended by a conservative estimate of 40,000 people.

In December 1983, Manilow was reported to have endowed the music departments at six major universities in the United States and Canada. The endowments were part of a continuing endeavor by Manilow to recognize and encourage new musical talent.

During his midlife years, Manilow began to expand his repertoire by exploring his own musical interests. The result was his 1984 collection of original barroom tunes 2:00 AM Paradise Cafe, a jazz/blues album that was recorded in one live take in the studio. In 1984, Showtime aired a documentary of Manilow recording the album with a number of jazz legends, such as Sarah Vaughn and Mel Torm?.

In 1984 and 1985, England aired two one-hour concert specials from his National Exhibition Centre (NEC) concerts.

In 1985, Manilow left Arista Records for RCA Records. There he released the pop album Manilow, and began a phase of international music, as he performed songs and duets in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, among other languages. The Manilow album was a complete about face from the Paradise Cafe album, containing a number of tracks that were of a modern uptempo and synthesized quality. In 1985, Japan aired a concert special Manilow did there where he played Sakura on the koto.

In his only lead acting role, he portrayed Tony Starr in a 1985 CBS film based on Copacabana which also featured Annette O'Toole as Lola Lamarr and Joseph Bologna as Rico. This was named one of the top TV specials of the year by TV Guide magazine. Manilow penned all the songs for the movie, with lyrics provided by established collaborators Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman. RCA records also released a soundtrack album of the movie.

In October 1986, Manilow, along with Bruce Sussman, Tom Scott, and Charlie Fox went to Washington, D.C. for two days of meetings with legislators, including lunch with then Senator Al Gore (D-TN). They were there to lobby against a copyright bill put forward by local television broadcasters that would mandate songwriter-producer source licensing of theme and incidental music on syndicated television show reruns and would disallow use of the blanket license now in effect. The songwriters said without the blanket license, artists would have to individually negotiate up front with producers, without knowing if a series will be a success. The license now pays according to a per-use formula. Manilow said that such a bill would act as a precedent for broadcasters to get rid of the blanket license entirely.

The following year, McGraw-Hill published his autobiography Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise which had taken him about three years to complete. While promoting his autobiography, Manilow defended his music in a telephone interview: I live in laid-back L.A., but in my heart, I'm an energetic New Yorker and that's what has always come out of my music. I've always been surprised when the critics said I made wimpy, little ballads.

Manilow returned to Arista Records in 1987 with the release of Swing Street. The album contained a mixture of traditional after-dark and techno jazz. It contained Brooklyn Blues, an autobiographical song for Manilow, and Hey Mambo an uptempo Latin style duet with Kid Creole, produced with the help of Emilio Estefan, Jr., founder of Miami Sound Machine.

In March 1988, CBS aired Manilow's Big Fun on Swing Street special that featured songs and special guests from his Swing Street and 2:00 AM Paradise Cafe albums including Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Phyllis Hyman, Stanley Clarke, Carmen McRae, Tom Scott, Gerry Mulligan, Diane Schuur, Full Swing, and Uncle Festive a band within Manilow's band at the time. The special was nominated for two Emmys in categories of Outstanding Lighting Direction (Electronic): For a Variety/Music or drama series, a miniseries or a special and won in the category of Outstanding Art Direction for a Variety or Music program.

England also aired another NEC one-hour concert special Manilow did while on his Big Fun Tour de Force tour.

In 1988, he performed Please Don't Be Scared and Mandy/Could It Be Magic at That's What Friends Are For: AIDS Concert '88, a benefit concert for the Warwick Foundation headed by Dionne Warwick and shown on Showtime a couple of years later.

In the 1988 Walt Disney Pictures cartoon movie Oliver & Company Bette Midler's character sung a new Manilow composition called Perfect Isn't Easy.

The 1989 release of Barry Manilow, which contained Please Don't Be Scared, Keep Each Other Warm and The One That Got Away, ended Manilow's streak of albums of original self-written material. Except for two songs, the songs were neither written nor arranged by himself and was the beginning of a phase of his recording career consisting of covers and compilations.

In 1989, Manilow put on a show named Barry Manilow at the Gershwin from April 18 to June 10, 1989 where he made 44 appearances. By coincidence, the Gershwin Theatre (formally called the Uris Theatre) was the same one where Barry Manilow Live was recorded in 1976.

A bestselling 90-minute video of the same show was released the following year as Barry Manilow Live On Broadway. The Showtime one-hour special Barry Manilow SRO On Broadway consisted of edited highlights from this video.

Manilow followed this set of shows with a sold out world tour of the Broadway show.