Michael Gordon (Mike) Oldfield (born 15 May 1953, Reading, Berkshire) is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, new age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature. Oldfield enjoys a special place in pop history not only for his most famous composition, but as a bridge between prog-rock, new age, mainstream pop, and cinematic music. He is best known for his hit 1973 album Tubular Bells, which launched Virgin Records, and for his 1983 hit single Moonlight Shadow. His other '70s recordings (Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, Incantations) are widely considered prog-rock classics, comprised of sounds ranging from Celtic folk and guitar rock to jazz, spidery funk, and neo-classical. While he pursued a direction that elucidated itself via pop during the '80s and '90s, his progressive rock and jazz leanings returned in the 21st century on albums such as Return to Ommadawn. In addition to his own recordings, Oldfield is a prolific session player and arranger. He has worked extensively with Kevin Ayers, David Bedford, Pierre Moerlin's Gong, Robert Wyatt, sister Sally Oldfield, Michel Polnareff, and many more.

Tubular Bells, originally dubbed Opus 1, grew out of studio time gifted him by Richard Branson, who at the time was running a mail-order record retail service. After its completion, Oldfield shopped the record to a series of labels, only to meet with rejection; frustrated, Branson decided to found his own label, and in 1973, Tubular Bells became the inaugural release of Virgin Records. An atmospheric, intricate composition that fused rock and folk motifs with the structures of minimalist composition, the 49-minute instrumental piece (performed on close to 30 different instruments, virtually all of them played by Oldfield himself) spent months in the number one spot on the U.K. charts, and eventually sold over 16 million copies globally. In addition to almost single-handedly establishing Virgin as one of the most important labels in the record industry, Tubular Bells also created a market for what would later be dubbed new age music, and won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 1974.