A sea of over 120,000 emo and alt-rock music fans took over the Las Vegas Festival Grounds this past weekend for another successful “When We Were Young” music festival. This year’s festival—the fourth straight year that featured emo and rock fans flocking to Vegas, black eyeliner, skinny jeans and all—had a different feel to it.
It proved that this music scene has moved on from a “nostalgia” play to one full of current relevancy and importance.
It also provided another example to both Alt Radio and Rock Radio airplay of why this music still matters.
Headlined by the likes of Blink-182, All Time Low, Avril Lavigne and Panic! At the Disco, as well as harder rock acts like Knocked Loose, letlive., and Ice Nine Kills, this year’s WWWY allowed their peers—and also “the next tier” of rockers—to showcase why they are still around and, for many of them, bigger than ever before.
Nostalgia To Now
“It’s interesting. Everyone throws around that word ‘nostalgia,’ and for me, I prefer to use the word ‘reunion,’” Boys Like Girls bassist Greg James told me. “Boys Like Girls’ first album came out in 2006, so we’ve far surpassed, I guess, the typical lifespan of a band or an artist… so it feels like a blessing to be able to still be doing this.”
“We’re not a nostalgia act. We’re not going to come and play a festival and phone it in. We are going to keep writing music and keep being a band and doing what we love to do,” James continued.
That blessing has turned into blessings not only for BLG—who earlier this year put out arguably their best record ever and wrapped up a direct-support arena and baseball stadium run with The Jonas Brothers tour—but also for bands such as Yellowcard. The “Ocean Avenue” pop rockers just received their first No. 1 Alt Radio hit with their new song “Better Days,” despite being around for over 20 years.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s just nostalgia anymore. It might have been three years ago when we first came back, we kind of felt like, ‘Is that all this is? Do we hug it out and walk away again?’ Because [at the time] that was the biggest tour we’d ever done,” Yellowcard lead singer Ryan Key told Alternative Press.
“I think both Yellowcard and so many of our peers are having such a special moment that feels like it’s going to keep on. It’s going to carry on. This isn’t just a short, temporary yearning for nostalgia from fans. I think there’s something really happening here, and the fact that we’re all in our 40s doing this again—it’s surreal,” Key added.
All Time Low Reaches All Time High
One needs to look no further than the dominance of Baltimore natives All Time Low.
Formed in 2003, the band has been synonymous with the pop rock and pop punk world. Only in their case—they never stopped.
That drive and perseverance from the band and their team were clearly evident on Friday night when the band played a pop-up concert to over 20,000 fans outside the Circa Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, essentially shutting down Las Vegas in celebration of their Everyone’s Talking album release.
Known for their songs such as “Dear Maria, Count Me In,” ATL’s new album features “The Weather,” which is currently at No. 3 on the Alternative Airplay charts.
This Doesn’t Just Happen
This is the culmination of a number of bands staying with it, alongside the return of others now releasing new music and rediscovering the fire that made them realize why they did it in the first place—and it’s something special.
“As a publicist who’s been working in this genre since I graduated college in 2005 and have never stopped, this weekend at WWWYF and the last four years overall have proven that emo, pop punk, post-hard, and rock will never die. It’s a community like no other, being passed down like a family heirloom from generation to generation,” Dayna Ghiraldi-Travers of Big Picture Media and Zodhiac Records told me.
“I personally brought my own 12-year-old daughter this year, and for her to see some of her favorite bands along with 70,000 people—and then be able to go backstage and tell them how incredible their set was—was really heartwarming. She of course loved Avril Lavigne, Plain White T’s, and Weezer, but walked away being Story of the Year’s newest biggest fan as well!”
Stop The Gatekeeping
During both their WWWY sets, All Time Low brought out rock band I Prevail lead singer Eric Vanlerberghe to sing their collaborative hit “Hate This Song.”
Do you know who didn’t hate the song? The fans—who knew every word and went wild during it.
Many of those same fans would then catch I Prevail, who have multiple No. 1 Mainstream Rock Airplay singles themselves.
Whereas other genres of music are gatekeeping, this one isn’t. Both the bands and the fans have no shame belting out Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” while also knowing every lyric to Knocked Loose’s songs.
And if the fans don’t, maybe airplay and the music industry shouldn’t either.
“This weekend made me realize this scene isn’t just music—it’s family,” The Summer Set lead singer Brian Dales told me.
The powers-that-be within the music industry and music airplay can learn a lot from the success of the last four years of When We Were Young Festival and the comeback for the Warped Tour.
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‘Gunz’ has been a staple in the music, sports and news industry for over a decade. From his first on-air appearances on MTV and FUSE television as a teenager to broadcasting nationally with Don Imus, to most recently hosting the Vans Warped Tour on Amazon Music, he has become one of the industry’s most insightful and trusted voices. As host of idobi Radio’s ‘The Gunz Show’ (80K+ Weekly Listeners) for the last fifteen years, Gunz has built a reputation for Breaking Bands and Breaking News, including notable debut interviews from bands such as Twenty One Pilots, Cobra Starship, fun., and viral interviews with artists such as Machine Gun Kelly, All Time Low and The All American Rejects. Whether it’s hosting red carpets or exclusive sit-downs with media’s biggest names from Clive Davis to Dana White, Gunz answers not only “What” is happening, but more importantly – “Why?” for programmers, publicists, artists, entertainers and fans alike.
