Best Air Songs: 10 Downtempo Tracks To Chill Out To

9: Kelly Watch The Stars (from ‘Moon Safari’, 1998)

With gently vocodered vocals coming across like Daft Punk on a spa holiday, Kelly Watch The Stars easily ranks among the best Air songs for making an ambient-pop earworm out of an ode to a 70s sex symbol. “Kelly is this character in Charlie’s Angels,” Jean-Benoît Dunckel told Stereogum, “and at the time we said she was the most beautiful girl in the world. So that’s why we sung about Kelly.” Making Charlie proud with a flurry of floaty, arpeggiated piano tones, Kelly Watch The Stars went Top 40 in the UK following its release as a single, in May 1998.

8: Surfing On A Rocket (from ‘Talkie Walkie’, 2004)

Like a sonic journey through the cosmos, Surfing On A Rocket, from Air’s 2004 album, Talkie Walkie, is a wondrously mellow glide into gravity-defying bliss. Combined with soft, whispery vocals and otherworldly ride cymbals, Jason Falkner’s orbiting bass notes and Godin and Bunckel’s nasally intoned mantra inspired Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, who would later describe Air’s Talkie Walkie as one of his favourite albums. A laidback marvel of rippling ethereality, Surfing In A Rocket will take you to the Moon and back.

7: Ce Matin-Là (from ‘Moon Safari’, 1998)

Inspired by Godin and Bunckel’s love of a French cartoon they used to enjoy as schoolkids, Ce Matin-Là toys around with an array of playful synths, acoustic strumming and parping tuba. “This is the most childish song for us,” Nicolas Godin told Stereogum. “It’s a reference to an old French TV show we used to watch when we were children, Barbapapa.” Feeling less like overt electronica and more like a long-lost lounge-jazz gem, Ce Matin-Là is one of the best Air songs from Moon Safari, an album which went on to sell more than two million copies worldwide.

6: Alone In Kyoto (from ‘Talkie Walkie’, 2004)

Eventually finding a home as the closer to Talkie Walkie, Alone In Kyoto first appeared in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film, Lost In Translation, starring Bill Murray. “It’s a great movie,” Godin later told NME. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like Bill Murray – he’s the favourite actor of everybody, like the acting Pope.” Blessed by soft acoustic plucking and the use of a Japanese zither, Alone In Kyoto brings to mind the work of Ryuichi Sakamoto and is one of the best Air songs to evoke the indescribable feeling of solitude.

5: All I Need (from ‘Moon Safari’ 1998)

Replete with slinky basslines and jazzy organ stabs, All I Need was one of the many successful singles from Air’s 1998 masterpiece, Moon Safari, thanks in part to Beth Hirsch’s angelic turn on vocals. “I discovered Beth Hirsch,” Godin later told The Guardian. “She was my neighbour in Montmartre, and she made us sound like a space-age Carpenters.” Perfectly mirroring the album’s concept of floating around the solar system like an untethered astronaut, All I Need is one of the finest examples of cosmic pop among the best Air songs.

4: Sexy Boy (from ‘Moon Safari’, 1998)

Oozing with amorous sensuality and desire, Sexy Boy is palpably seductive. Like a postmodern take on Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus, it easily ranks among the best Air songs for the way it conjures the thought patterns of an infatuated observer. With almost carnal relish, Sexy Boy’s churning riff was created on a vintage Höfner bass guitar – a model most famously associated with Paul McCartney – as the pair channelled 60s pop music to mimic the heave-ho of billowing lust. “The song was about who we wanted to be,” Nicolas Godin later admitted to The Guardian. “We weren’t handsome when we were younger; our friends always had more success with girls.”

3: Cherry Blossom Girl (from ‘Talkie Walkie’, 2004)

Sweeping listeners into a psychedelic haze, Cherry Blossom Girl, the lead single from Talkie Walkie, is a highly romantic work of erotic longing. “I guess it reflects how we were feeling at the time,” Jean-Benoît Dunckel told The Independent. “It comes from a very warm place. We were, and still are, very in love with our girlfriends and we both have beautiful children. It’s a happy time for us.” With soft-spoken, almost hallucinatory lyrics and Malik Mezzadri’s efflorescent flute trills, the song is a colourful swirl of acoustic fingerpicking and budding drum machines that basks in the glow of new-found love.

2: Playground Love (from ‘The Virgin Suicides’, 2000)

A key part of the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, Playground Love was Air’s smooth but icily romantic foray into the lovelorn melancholia of doomed teenagers. “Every time I travel and meet fans, they all tell me about this soundtrack,” Nicolas Godin said in an interview with Dazed. “It seems to be one of the best things we ever did and the thing that people like the most.” Aided by hushed and intimate vocals by Gordon Tracks (a pseudonym for Thomas Mars, of French indie band Phoenix), it’s a dark song with wispy lyrics that speak of adolescent infatuation (“Love is all, all my soul/You’re my playground love”), all set to whimpering sax and ominous synths that foreshadow the death of innocence. Most certainly one of the best Air songs, Playground Love is bittersweet and uncontestably beautiful.

1: La Femme D’Argent (from ‘Moon Safari’, 1998)

Heard in chill-out lounges across the land throughout the late 90s, La Femme D’Argent was the hypnotic opening track from Moon Safari. Featuring Nicolas Godin’s tremendously funky bass-playing and a superb organ solo from Eric Regert, the song perfectly mixes floaty, sci-fi-inspired Minimoog with easy-listening jazz-pop vamping, resulting in a balmy sonic stew that engulfs you like a warm bubble bath.

“It’s a trippy song, and it’s also a trance,” Jean-Benoît Dunckel said in an interview with Billboard. “As a musician, we are searching for the right mood and it’s not easy sometimes, but searching for a trance, a sort of yoga music.” Forever inviting listeners to let their minds drift, La Femme D’Argent is seven minutes of ambient splendour that deservedly tops our list of the best Air songs of all time.

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