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A New Bohemia

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - Nonetheless
Producer - James Ford
Subsequent albums - none
Other releases - single

Journalist Laura Snapes describes this "romantic" song as being "filled with yearning for artistic sanctums of yesteryear." An album review in Classic Pop magazine described it as "one of Tennant/Lowe's richest and most dramatic songs." It was released digitally as the album's third single in early June 2024, with a physical release to follow.

Based on what the Boys have said about this song (in Annually 2024), Neil got the idea for it from walking with Chris through "a hipster neighbourhood" in Los Angeles while they were there working on Super and realizing that "No one here would know who we are." It also sounds as though the song's central character is based on their feelings of having experienced—and now nostalgically missing—the bohemian scene of London in the 1990s. The first part of the song addresses him in the second person, describing how he feels out of place ("Like silent movie stars in 60s Hollywood") and outdated ("No one knows who you are in the hipster neighborhood"). Friendless, he has no companionship aside from his memories of a more exciting period of his life. A rhetorical question ("Where have they gone?") referring to a trendy group of conceptual artists of the early 1970s, Les Petites Bon-Bons (see the annotation below), suggests that he himself was once something of a "hipster," but those days are long gone. Now speaking wistfully in the first-person voice of this character, Neil offers a delightfully unexpected couplet in summation of his fondest wishes:

I wish I lived my life free-and-easier
I need to find a new bohemia

The rest of the song continues in the same vein as the narrator bemoans his current life ("a mess like an unmade bed") and longs to escape to a new place where he can once again experience the freedom and excitement of his younger days. But we as listeners know what he doesn't know, or at least what he refuses to acknowledge openly despite his deep-down realization otherwise: that he cannot escape, that he cannot recapture his youth. The problem isn't where he is physically, but where he is intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Like everyone sooner or later, he's one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Regardless, the final lines express his continued determination, changing the last line of the refrain from the wishful "I need to find a new bohemia" to a more positive assertion, "I'm on my way to a new bohemia." Is he about to uproot himself and move to another town in his quest, steadfastly believing that, despite his disappointments, places and people of interest to him (and who are interested in him) can still be found somewhere? Or is he accepting his fate, perhaps even impending death itself, declaring that to be his "new bohemia"?

Annotations

Although in its oldest sense Bohemia refers to a large historical region of Czechia (the Czech Republic), which used to be an independent kingdom, its most frequent current usage, including the meaning of the word as it appears in this song, dates back at least to the early nineteenth century to refer to an unorganized "movement" of artistic sensibilities and non-traditional lifestyles, especially in the urban areas of Europe. References to "bohemia" (lower-case) in this sense are believed to have originated in France, inspired by recent immigrants from Eastern Europe (many from the historical region of Bohemia) who settled in Paris and other French cities, often adopting unconventional lifestyles centering on the arts. From there both the terminology and the lifestyles for which it served as a convenient shorthand quickly spread to other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. (Its first documented American usage appeared in the late 1850s, roughly 25 years after its first documented usage in France.) The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's great 1896 tragic opera La bohème—the title of which translates to Bohemia or, as a singular collective term, The Bohemians—concerns a group of artistically inclined young Parisians circa 1850 living "the bohemian lifestyle."
"Walking down the Strip" – Many cities have streets popularly known as "the Strip," which generally refers to its primary street for shopping and/or entertainment. Especially famous Strips include Sunset Strip in Los Angeles and the Las Vegas Strip. Although, without Neil's confirmation, it may not be possible to say which "Strip" particular is referred to in this song, or even if it is any particular Strip, clues in the song—mentioning Hollywood and Les Petites Bon-Bons (see below)—point to Sunset Strip.
Les Petites Bon-Bons – French for "little sweets," adopted as an aggressively campy moniker, Les Petites Bon-Bons was a small conceptual art collective, affiliated with the newly emerging gay liberation movement, formed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (of all places) in the early 1970s. Later relocating to Los Angeles, they associated themselves with David Bowie and other figures in glam rock and, later, punk and disco. Active only four years, they disbanded in 1975. When the narrator of "A New Bohemia" asks himself, "Where have they gone, les Petites Bon-Bons?" he's asking a rhetorical question. They haven't "gone anywhere" since they collectively no longer exist. It thus helps signal the virtual hopelessness of his plight. It's also a metonymic means of asking, "Where have all the bohemians gone?" In addition, Neil has observed (in Annually 2024) that he's quite intentionally punning on the literal French meaning to ask "Where are the sweet things we used to love years ago?"

And even though the question is rhetorical, the answer to where Les Petites Bon-Bons actually went—as well as a great deal more information about them—can be found in an online article posted by the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project.
The lines "My life is a mess / like an unmade bed" echoes (whether intentionally or not) a line in the second stanza of the 1937 John Betjeman poem "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel," where an "unmade bed" is also mentioned. Neil is known to be familiar with the poems of John Betjeman, and he had been reading a new biography of Wilde around this time, as evidenced in another Nonetheless track, "Love Is the Law." A couple of my site visitors have also suggested the possible influence of U.K. artist Tracey Emin's 1998 art installation "My Bed" (which indeed displays an unmade bed) as a source of inspiration, especially since the Boys are personally acquainted with her. The facts that Neil mentions her when talking about this song (though not specifically in relation to these lines) in Annually 2024 and that she appears among the "bohemians" in the song's music video make this influence a virtual certainty.

Mixes/versions

Officially released

Mixers: James Ford, Jas Shaw
- Album version (4:01)
- Radio edit (3:46)
Mixer: Alex Metric

Alex Metric remix (6:35)

Mixer: Pete Gleadall
- Demo (4:26)

List cross-references

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