Imagination is the fourteenth studio album by Australian-American pop singer Helen Reddy that was released in 1983 by MCA Records. As with the first of the two, 1981's Play Me Out, it did not reach Billboard magazine's Top LP's & Tapes chart. Reddy was subsequently dropped from the record label after the release; in her 2006 autobiography, The Woman I Am: A Memoir, Reddy wrote, "I was not surprised when I received a form letter from [MCA]'s legal department telling me that I'd been dropped from the label."

The path from the planning stages for the album to its appearance on store shelves was not a smooth one. A story on Reddy from the September 19, 1981, issue of Billboard detailed some of what she had in mind for this second MCA project: "'I'll work on my next album around the end of the year or in January or February so it'll be ready for an Easter [1982] release,'" she told the magazine, but it didn't come out until 1983. She also told them that "Joel Diamond, who produced the first MCA project, will also handle production on the next LP," but that job went to Joe Wissert.

In the liner notes of Reddy's 1996 compilation CD When I Dream, Brian Giorgi explains that the changes in the music industry in 1983 that sealed the fate of this album were not just in top 40 radio programming. "Changes were also taking place within her record company. The top level management which had brought her to MCA Records was gone." Reddy concurred: "Between the time of recording and the time of release of the Imagination album there was a major shakeup in the executive offices at MCA records," and instead of the person "who would have known how to market and promote the new album to my demographic, I was now dealing with someone of much lower stature in the industry." She found out how much lower when the album arrived in stores:

The fact that Reddy was divorcing Jeff Wald, who had also been her manager since the late 1960s, and that they were in a custody dispute over their 10-year-old son became of greater interest to entertainment reporters. "In preparation for the release of the album, my publicist had arranged for an article in People magazine. I had gone to their photographer's studio to have pictures taken to accompany the story." Later when she flew to New York for what was to be a promotional appearance on Good Morning America, the news of the divorce got out. "While I was in the air, the latest edition of People magazine was hitting the stands. I didn't know it yet, but the interview intended as publicity for the album was now a cover story, complete with a smiling picture of me, on 'Hollywood's Dirtiest Custody Case.'"

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