Image ofMike Oldfield

Mike Oldfield

Musician
Forlisteners curious about progressive rock and long-form instrumental albums, plus anyone trying to navigate oldfield’s pop-era detours and later stylistic reinventions.
26 Reviews 10 Definitions 26 Charts
Progressive Instrumental New Age

The Profile

Mike Oldfield is a British composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist widely associated with progressive rock and long-form instrumental suites. He rose to major international fame with the 1973 album “Tubular Bells,” later exploring folk/Celtic, ambient, pop and orchestral/symphonic directions across a long discography.

Publicly known: he is credited as a multi-instrumentalist composer and producer; his 1973 debut “Tubular Bells” became a major international success and its opening theme was used in the film “The Exorcist.”

Across these reviews, Oldfield is praised as a precocious multi-instrumentalist whose long suites (especially “Tubular Bells” and “Ommadawn”) feel like high-water marks. Writers also trace a shift toward pop/80s production and occasional creative dips, with some albums called uneven or outright uninspired. Later-era works split opinion: some hear mature, cinematic/symphonic beauty, others boredom or a too-heavy reliance on past glories. Celtic, folk, ambient, world-music and orchestral textures recur as key traits in how listeners describe his sound.

Notable Quotes

❝ Creating a 49-minute instrumental track, even in the "progressive" early '70s, was certainly a gamble.
❝ "Ommadawn" marks the end of Mike Oldfield's most creative phase.
❝ The main flaw of this record is that it induces a state of boredom-induced torpor.
❝ Here it is, the true masterpiece of Mike Oldfield, "The Songs Of Distant Earth"
❝ It is difficult to go further in describing such an extreme album as this, just as it is difficult to classify it into a genre. It deliberately escapes any recognizable canon.
Loading

You and Mike Oldfield

Log in to DeBaser
 Send an image  Send a work

Who knows Mike Oldfield?

Loading...
Add image
Image Id: 88415 Resolution: 600 x 809
Image Id: 76934 Resolution: 183 x 275
Image Id: 1564 Resolution: 126 x 117