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Michael Joseph MacNeil (born 20 July 1958) is a Scottish songwriter and keyboardist. He is best known as a former member of the group Simple Minds.
During his time with Simple Minds, MacNeil was recognised as one of the main composers that contributed to the band's success throughout the 1980s, releasing the UK number three album New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84) in 1982, and then scoring four consecutive UK number one albums with Sparkle in the Rain (1984), Once Upon a Time (1985), Live in the City of Light (1987) and Street Fighting Years (1989), and one UK number one single "Belfast Child" (1989). Exhausted by the relentless touring schedules MacNeil left the band at the end of the decade.
After leaving Simple Minds, he occasionally joined Simple Minds-related projects such as Fourgoodmen (along with fellow ex-Simple Minds member Derek Forbes plus Ian Henderson and Bruce Watson) and Ex-Simple Minds (with Forbes and original Simple Minds drummer Brian McGee). In 2003 and 2018 respectively, MacNeil contributed with accordion backing tracks to Simple Minds songs "Dirty Old Town" and their cover version of "Brothers in Arms" on the album Reimagines the Eighties. He also contributed keyboards and programming to a reformed Visage on their final studio album Demons to Diamonds (2015). In 2016 he accepted an Ivor Novello Award for Simple Minds "Outstanding Song Collection".
MacNeil released a solo album called People, Places, Things on his own record label, Mix Records, in 1997.
In 1986, MacNeil's stage equipment included a Yamaha CP-70 piano (used as his master keyboard via MIDI), a Yamaha DX7, an Emulator II, an Oberheim OB-8, a Roland Jupiter-8 and an unspecified Kurzweil keyboard using an Apple Macintosh for program saving. He was also using an Generalmusic accordion with MIDI capacity.
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