Fans Celebrates Third Year of When We Were Young Festival in Vegas
By Herrick Swirbalus
This weekend was the the third consecutive year of When We Were Young Festival; a two day festival occuring the weekend of October 19 and 20th on the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. This year brought a mighty lineup of emo and post-hardcore classic bands, including My Chemical Romance to headline a second year, Sleeping With Sirens, Pierce The Veil, and many more noteworthy bands. Evident from the festival’s title, the event is for those who identified with the emo community during its peak in the 2000’s. Going for a Vans Warped Tour nostalgic feel, the tour caters to its demographic of emo parents who have outlived the height of their favorite band’s careers. For the last three years 60,000 middle aged emo fans have traveled to Vegas from across the world to rejoice in times when they were young.
This year of When We Were Young featured a unique way of splitting up the bands’ sets. When the lineup was announced in November of 2023, it was done so with the performing bands’ most famous album covers, confirming that each band that played would perform the entirety of an album. Most bands chose their most classic album that represents their career, for example My Chemical Romance chose emo classic The Black Parade, Jimmy Eat World did Bleed American, Dashboard Confessional did Dusk and Summer, you get the idea. However there was one exception. Fall Out Boy did not choose a single album to perform, and instead did an “Eras Tour” style performance spanning their career in chronological album order. To the defense of the band, they have many iconic albums that all sound different making it hard to please everyone by just choosing one album. Because they played more than one album each night, they had a longer set than headliners My Chemical Romance by about half an hour, who only played their 52 minute album The Black Parade plus a two song encore. This was to the disappointment of some who wished to see more of the band, but for the most part, the entire album performance format allowed hardcore fans to see some deep cuts live. Pierce The Veil played songs like “One Hundred Sleepless Nights” and “The First Punch” off of their 12 year old album Collide With The Sky. Both songs have never been played before. Emo fans are reputable for their hardcore devotion to the entire discographies of their favorite bands, so being able to hear entire albums just like how they did with CD’s back in the 2000’s was something really special for the fans.
The festival also featured many notable moments that made the trip worth it for those who are not native to Vegas. For starters, this weekend was My Chemical Romance’s return to the stage since March of 2023. Many collaborations took place, including Wiz Khalifa and Travie McCoy of Gym Class Heroes joining Fall Out Boy onstage. Numerous artists like Kellin Quinn and Jenna McDougall joined Pierce the Veil to perform classics from the band’s catalog, and Mike Hranica joined A Day To Remember to perform “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?” A troop of Scooby-Doo’s stormed the stage for Simple Plan’s childhood classic “What’s New Scooby-Doo?” The beauty of this festival is the bands’ ability to have fun and recognize their age. They can lean into the jokes of being old and have fun with it because the same stands for the fans.
Despite a few hiccups like the blatantly silly misspellings of band names on merch, and mixed receptions on the full album setlists, When We Were Young 2024 was a success and celebration for the emo community.
When We Were Young is incredible for its overwhelming sense of community around all types of emo. Culture never really goes away, it just changes, which could not be more evident at the festival. Although many fans in attendance were there to reminisce about the music of their youth, the crowd consisted of many teenagers who stand for the same ideas and music that the older fans did when they were their age.
Emo reinvents itself in many genres and scenes, which is something that When We Were Young does a great job of recognizing. The first year of the festival featured many lesser known and niche bands in the scene like The Linda Lindas, Poppy, Mom Jeans., and more. The second year had a focus on the pop-punk side of emo with headliners Green Day and Blink-182, and this year demonstrated a return to form with classic screamo and post-hardcore. Now the clique’s sights shift to the upcoming lineup announcement for the reunion of Vans Warped Tour, but regardless of the reception of the attempt to bring back Warped Tour, the scene knows it can rely on When We Were Young Festival to feel represented.
