Air - Playground Love (feat. Gordon Tracks)

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. This episode of Song Exploder is brought to you by Booking.com. My wife and I have been thinking about visiting some of our friends in Philadelphia this summer. And so while we've been daydreaming, I've been looking on Booking.com to check out places where we might stay in Philly. I put in our dates, and there are over 100 options listed. So I'm gonna start narrowing things down. I'm gonna choose places that have an eight or higher rating and a king bed available. And then I'm gonna focus on hotels in one of my favorite neighborhoods, the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. And look, there's a hotel here with a 9.0 rating, and there's a note on the site that says, "Couples in particular like this hotel. They rated it a 9.5 for a two-person trip." All right, so look at that. That sounds pretty awesome. You can find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com, booking.yeah. Book today on the site or in the app. Song Exploder is sponsored by Quince. They have so much great stuff on their website, from basics like socks and underwear to jeans and sweaters, all the way up to cashmere overcoats. Well, now that it's spring, I'm looking to get some stuff that feels appropriate for the weather. And so I just ordered a linen utility shirt. I'm very excited to get it. I know because I have other Quince stuff that it's gonna look sharp and be comfortable. Plus, I love that Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, responsible manufacturing practices. Refresh your every day with luxury that you're actually gonna use. Head to quince.com/songexploder for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty-five day returns. It's now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash songexploder for free shipping and three hundred sixty-five day returns. Quince.com/songexploder. The band Air is a duo from Versailles, France. The 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 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.

Love is all, all my soul. You're my playground love.

So for this episode, I spoke to all of them, Nicolas and JB from Air, Sofia Coppola, Thomas Mars, as well as Brian Reitzel, the music supervisor on the film. The story of the song Playground Love begins over twenty-five years ago with Sofia