In “La Bohème” (1965), an older painter returns to Montmartre and remembers being twenty there: a tiny studio, a young woman who posed for him, nights spent painting and talking, hunger and joy together. The bohemian life, he says, meant being happy. Now the lilacs are gone, the old place is changed, and the words “la bohème” mean nothing anymore.
Charles Aznavour, the son of Armenian immigrants in Paris, was one of the great French singers of the century; this is one of his most loved songs.
It's slow and nostalgic, sung with crystal-clear diction. Notice the imperfect tense — “we were”, “we used to” — the French tense of memories.