Artist · chart history · #640 in indie & aaa artist polls
Air
Band Versailles France Formed 1995 French band
Air formed in 1995 in Versailles, France. Air has 37 chart appearances on 29 radio countdowns from 12 stations on RockLists, spanning 1998–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Cherry Blossom Girl”, which appears on 8 lists with a best position of #238. The station that charted Air most often is The Colorado Sound (Fort Collins–Denver, CO), with 6 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1999.
Air are Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, 2 lounge-lizard dreamers from Versailles who formed the band in 1995 and made electronica feel like a velvet-lined space capsule. Moon Safari, in 1998, was their debut and it floats: warm keyboards, hushed voices and melodies that could soundtrack a French film that never existed. "Sexy Boy" is its knowing, woozy come-on, "La Femme d'Argent" a slinky drift, and "All I Need" pure sunlit melancholy.
That film finally came along when they scored Sofia Coppola's first feature, The Virgin Suicides, a gauzy, haunted score that suited her story perfectly. Talkie Walkie followed in 2004 with "Cherry Blossom Girl" and "Surfing on a Rocket", and at home in France they picked up music awards for their electronic albums in 1999 and 2005 and for their film music in 2001. They were also up for the Shortlist Music Prize in 2004.
Pocket Symphony, Love 2, Le voyage dans la lune and Music for Museum kept pushing the palette in new directions, but the core is always the same: 2 men, a room full of keyboards, and a knack for making sadness feel luxurious.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Air on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cherry Blossom Girl | 8 | #238 | – | – | |
| 2 | Sexy Boy | 10 | #88 | – | 1998 | |
| 3 | La Femme D'Argent | 6 | #149 | – | – | |
| 4 | All I Need | 3 | #33 | – | 1999 | |
| 5 | Surfing on a Rocket | 4 | #57 | – | 2004 | |
| 6 | So Light Is Her Footfall | 1 | #240 | – | – | |
| 7 | Once Upon A Time | 1 | #62 | – | 2007 | |
| 8 | Playground Love | 1 | #86 | – | 2000 | |
| 9 | Parade | 1 | #120 | – | 2012 | |
| 10 | Kelly Watch The Stars | 1 | #857 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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