"Playground Love" is the first song from French duo Air's (Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel) original sountrack for "The Virgin Suicides", Sofia Coppola's first film (which was based on Jeffrey Eugenides' debut novel). The film is organized around a group of boys in a Michigan suburban neighborhood in the 1970s, who are all trying to come to terms with the deaths of the five mysterious, beguiling Lisbon sisters - the erstwhile targets of their youthful obsessions and the angels of adolescent angst. The reasons for their collective suicides are never fully clarified, but their mother' obsessive paranoia about their safety stands as a likely cause.
Hypnotic and underscored with sadness, "Playground Love" sets up youthful love as a brief escape from the claustrophobic confinements of suburbia and parental control. It's the only track with proper vocals, and was co-written and sung by Gordon Tracks (i.e. Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars). When everything seems to be trapped in stasis, the rhythmn of one's pulsing heartbreak serve as the compass arrow:
I'm a highschool loverAnd you're my favorite flavourLove is all, all my soulYou're my playground love
Yet my hands are shakingI feel my body remainsTime's no matter, I'm on fireOn the playground, love
You're the piece of goldThat flashes on my soulExtra time, on the groundYou're my Playground Love
Anytime, anywayYou're my Playground Love'
Lyrics: Genius
