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Mike Oldfield

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Mike Oldfield

English musician, songwriter and producer

From
Reading, United Kingdom
Since
1953–present
Rating
★ 4.55 (18 votes)
Releases
214
  • progressive rock
  • new age
  • electronic
  • ambient
  • experimental
  • avant-garde
  • classical
  • crossover prog

About

Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is a retired English musician, songwriter and producer best known for his debut album Tubular Bells (1973), which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield played a range of instruments, which included keyboards and percussion, as well as vocals. He had adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient and new age music. His discography includes 25 studio albums, nine of which have reached the UK top ten.

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Oldfield took up the guitar at age ten and left school in his teens to embark on a music career. From 1967 to 1970, he and his sister Sally Oldfield were a folk duo, the Sallyangie, after which he performed with Kevin Ayers before starting work on Tubular Bells in 1971. The album caught the attention of Richard Branson, who agreed to make it the first-ever release on his new label Virgin Records. Its opening was used in the horror film The Exorcist, and the album went on to sell over 2.7 million copies in the UK. Oldfield followed it with Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978). Like Tubular Bells, these albums consist of longform, mostly instrumental pieces.
In the late 1970s, Oldfield began to tour and release more commercial and song-based music, beginning with Platinum (1979), QE2 (1980) and Five Miles Out (1982). His most successful album of this period was Crises (1983), which features the worldwide hit single "Moonlight Shadow," with the vocalist Maggie Reilly. After leaving Virgin and signing with WEA, the 1990s saw him release Tubular Bells II (1992) and Tubular Bells III (1998) among other albums, and he experimented with virtual reality and gaming content with his MusicVR project. In 2012, Oldfield performed at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, while 2017 saw the release of his final album, Return to Ommadawn. Oldfield's label announced his retirement in 2023.

From Mike Oldfield on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Member of

Discography

Albums 32
EPs 6
Singles 86

Showing 60 of 86. See them all on MusicBrainz

Live 26
Compilations 51
Other 13

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Also known as

M. Oldfield · Michael Gordon Oldfield · Michael Oldfield · N OLDFIELD MICHAEL GORDO · Oldfield · Oldfield, Mike · The Mike Oldfield Group · マイク・オールドフィールド

Tags

  • british
  • celtic fusion
  • english
  • uk

Identifiers

ISNI
0000000121225610
IPI
00047039093
IPI
00077497524

Data from MusicBrainz, saved 11 Nov 2026. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, covers from the Cover Art Archive and Apple Music.