You just had to be there: The “When We Were Young” festival — a surprising success?
Source: When We Were Young
If you lived through the 2000’s and had an emo phase in your middle school to high school years, you must have heard of the When We Were Young (WWWY) festival. The festival took place in Nevada, Las Vegas from October 22nd to October 29th. The festival had an amazing lineup of genres that varied between rock and punk rock bands consisting of a lot of well-known artists including My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Bring Me the Horizon, Avril Lavigne, and my personal favourite, Pierce the Veil.
Although the festival was deemed a success throughout multiple social media news outlets, many fans were sceptical of the event. For starters, news of the festival came out early January of 2022. Due to the rise of the punk aesthetic, trendy alternative wear and music, it was initially thought of as some sort of joke amongst old fans. It seemed almost impossible to place all of these bands together in one venue, let alone one festival due to how often these bands go on tour.
Source: Reverbnation
WWWY Replaces Vans Warped Tour
I came across this announcement on my TikTok feed back in February and thought it was some sort of scam as well. There was no way all of these bands would play in one festival together. Rock bands, punk rock bands, alternative bands, pop punk, etc., would usually perform at the Warped Tour. Warped tour / Vans Warped tour is a festival for skater-punk music. However, due to multiple scandals and legal cases against multiple bands from fans, Warped Tour began to receive a negative reputation with their last tour ending in the summer of 2019. If you were a big fan of any punk-rock band between 2010 and 2015, Warped Tour was the place to be.
A Moment of Silence For The Haters and Sceptics
In all honesty, I thought the event would have turned into the Tanacon of 2022. I was right, at first. The first day of the WWWY festival turned out to be a complete disaster. Influencers and attendees that flew out to Las Vegas posted all over TikTok about their frustrations for the cancellation of the first day of the event. This was due to the dramatic weather changes of high winds. After viewing multiple videos of angry attendees, I chuckled to myself and found the whole thing to be a humorous disaster and thought the first day would officially be the end of the festival.
Luckily for attendees, the festival did continue. I tuned into TikTok two days during the week of the event. My feed became overflooded with videos related to the festival. I began to cry my eyes out for two hours after I came across a video of the reunion of Vic Fuentes and Kellin Quinn performing their iconic collaborative piece “King For a Day”. My favourite punk rock kings. Paramore gave the most beautiful speech about the community and performed “All I Wanted Was You” and “Misery Business”. Viewing the success of the festival brought me the biggest FOMO (fear of missing out) I have ever experienced.
Source: KERRANG
The When We Were Young Festival taught me to take a chance on events and music festivals. I was the biggest sceptic, and turned into the biggest fan of the festival. Having a successful festival that could replace the Vans Warped Tour filled the biggest void that fans of multiple bands once had. I wasn’t able to get tickets for the 2023 festival, but I hope to see you at the When We Were Young Festival in 2024.
