Air - Playground Love (feat. Gordon Tracks)

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The band Air is a duo from Versailles, France. Their first EP came out in 1995, followed by their critically acclaimed debut album, ‘Moon Safari,' which was an international hit. Then they made the music for the film ‘The Virgin Suicides,‘ which was written and directed by Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola, based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. The movie came out in 1999, and it was Sofia Coppola’s first film. An album version of Air’s score came out in 2000, and it was nominated for a Brit award. Pitchfork put it at number four on their list of the best film scores of all time. In addition to the instrumental music that appears in the movie, Air also wrote a song for the end credits called “Playground Love.” That song featured Sofia Coppola’s future husband, Thomas Mars, from the French band Phoenix, on vocals. Phoenix was still a very new band, and he and Sofia hadn’t even met yet. Thomas appears on the song under the name Gordon Tracks. So for this episode, I spoke to all of them: Nicolas and JB from Air; Sofia Coppola; Thomas Mars; as well as Brian Reitzell, the music supervisor of the film.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/air.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
0:06.7	I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.
0:10.6	So I just wanted to say a couple words about how this show works.
0:14.2	Song Exploder is part of Radiotopia, which is a group of independent podcasts.
0:18.4	And if you look around these days, independence is becoming more
0:21.0	and more rare. Everything from record labels to movies to newspapers, everything's getting
0:26.4	consolidated and controlled by a small number of corporations. To me, one of the tragedies of this
0:32.1	means you get less original, weird, unexpected, and creative stuff out in the world.
0:37.2	And this podcast is all about
0:38.6	celebrating the surprising ways that creativity gets manifested. That's really interesting to me,
0:44.1	the way that actual people turn their experiences into art. And if you're listening to this,
0:48.5	I hope that means it's interesting to you, too. But in order to maintain this show and that
0:52.9	philosophy, it takes a lot of hustling to keep
0:55.1	things going. This spiel is part of the hustle, and I hope you'll forgive me for it. But Song Exploder,
1:00.4	and all the shows at Radiotopia need the support of listeners like you. It's the annual Radiotopia
1:05.5	fundraiser right now, and we're looking for 1,500 new donors who believe in unique, independent media and the messiness of creativity, and more importantly, just love listening.
1:16.5	If that's you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation at songexplloter.net slash donate.
1:23.4	That's songexploader.net slash donate.
1:26.5	Thank you so much for making the show possible.
1:32.2	The band Air is a duo from Versailles, France.
1:35.8	The first EP came out in 1995, followed by their critically acclaimed debut album, Moon Safari,
1:41.8	which was an international hit.
	...

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