Rock Redux for Millennials

An abrupt Instagram announcement of the When We Were Young music festival sparked a social media frenzy. Despite skepticism, it’s one of the most hyped events of the upcoming season.

By Kendall Polidori

Smoke fills the air from cigarettes clenched between fingers adorned with chipped black nail polish as punks throw each other around a mosh pit.

They’re stepping on each other’s toes with feet clad in knee-high Converse, leather boots with rows of buckles or checkerboard slip-on Vans—just about anything, as long as it’s wild and black.

Wrists are graced with rubber bracelets with band names. Arms are covered in sleeves of tattoos. Some of the black T-shirts look at least 10 years old. Then there are the denim vests encrusted with iron-on patches and buttons.

Strands of multicolored hair bounce up and down and back and forth. An earlobe might no longer have a gauge earring, but the empty hole is still evident.

Welcome to When We Were Young, the post-Warped Tour music festival that should have happened 10 or more years ago. Now the punks have become adults and have the cash to wrap themselves in nostalgia. And they’re expected to shell out some of it to see their heroes this fall in the desert.

State Champs is one of more than 60+ bands scheduled to take the stage at the When We Were Young festival.

Neglecting pop-punk

For years, the hyper-specific sub-genre of pop-punk music was often overlooked by anyone who wasn’t immersed in its culture. The kids who reigned from the days of Warped Tour were no longer regarded as “cool,” and they remained far outside the mainstream. Until recently. Now, artists like Machine Gun Kelly, Willow Smith and Avril Lavigne are revitalizing pop-punk/ rock—scoring radio hits and taking home music awards.

That’s the backdrop for the social media frenzy around the announcement of the When We Were Young (WWWY) music festival. It’s sparking plenty of conversation—and memes—outside the formerly secluded emo community.

“Pop-punk and the alternative scene is having a moment, but for a while it was only cool to the people who knew about it,” said Ryan Scott Graham, bassist for State Champs.

Bands like State Champs have championed the scene since the early 2010s, but their music has gone unnoticed by people who wouldn’t dare step inside the doors of a Hot Topic store.

But as music evolves, the barriers between genres dissolve. Thus poppier artists like MGK are getting attention. Simply put, more people are aware of pop-punk now, and the hyped response to the festival’s announcement is justified.

But so is the skepticism around the event, skepticism so deep that doubters are likening it to the disastrous Fyre Festival.

Stellar list of bands

The WWWY lineup seems almost too good to be true. It supposedly includes Paramore, Bring Me The Horizon, My Chemical Romance and Alkaline Trio, just to name a few. For the “retired” emos of the early 2010s, it’s the roster of their dreams.

The festival’s official Instagram page was created on Jan. 18 and quickly acquired nearly 800,000 likes. In less than 24 hours, the hashtag #whenwewereyoung received 18 million views. And despite viral tweets from fans, the festival organizers didn’t even bother to create a Twitter profile.

Besides high ticket prices ($300+ for one day), observers also worry that many of the bands in the lineup weren’t aware of who else was playing. But Graham and State Champs guitarist Tyler Szalkowski confirmed that was done on purpose to initiate more social media hype.

“The festival heads knew that this was going to go into insane mode, and they didn’t tell anyone,” Szalkowski said. “So we confirmed our spot under the notion that Jimmy Eat World and Paramore were playing, and that was enough for us. Two hours before the lineup officially went public, we saw it and were immediately losing our shit.”

Szalkowski notes that fans want to see every single band on the bill because of the specificity of their niches. That enthusiasm could make the festival difficult to stage.

Logistics?

The lineup is stacked with about 65 bands all playing on the same day. The event is scheduled to run Oct. 22, 23 and 29, with the same lineup each day. With three stages, that leaves about 30 minutes for most sets and a tad bit longer for the headliners, adding up to a 12-hour day.

Still, as Graham puts it, the festival isn’t something some teenage guy thought up in his basement. It’s a professional event organized by the international entertainment company Live Nation. But experience doesn’t ensure success. Ten people died and hundreds were injured when the crowd got out of control at the Astroworld festival that Live Nation put on in November in Houston. Victims are suing the company for billions of dollars.

But a spokesperson for WWWY told Newsweek in January that, “the safety of fans, artists and staff is thoroughly planned for among event organizers and in coordination with local authorities.”

WWWY skepticism

The hype—good and bad—around the WWWY festival has put participating bands in the spotlight. Graham feels uneasy about fans’ skepticism, but there’s time to coordinate safety initiatives and logistics.

So, why does skepticism arise? Does the Fyre Festival get the blame, or is it something ingrained in pop-punk culture?

The festival is real, and the three dates are already sold out. It may expand the music of punk middle schoolers to the masses. It’s no longer a subculture, and Szalkowski noted that the festival is an opportunity for the scene and pop-punk to be “cool.”

If the culture suddenly penetrates the mainstream, the public will become more open to its ideals and aesthetics, such as multi-colored hair and skinny jeans. Graham recalls when he was the only person to rep all that when he was in high school in a small Michigan town.

Success or flop—WWWY will be talked about for years to come.

HYPE FEST

The Fyre Festival—hyped as an exotic extravaganza of music, glamor and luxury—turned out to be one of the most nightmarish frauds ever perpetrated.

In 2017, founders Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule promised attendees a memorable event of a lifetime in the Exuma district of the Bahamas. But they proved themselves incapable of handling the logistics.

Instead, people paid anywhere from $500 to $12,000 for tickets that brought them nothing but misery. They found themselves stranded with nowhere to sleep and almost nothing to eat or drink.

The promoters began hyping the festival a year before it was to take place. They targeted ads to reach the followers of models and powerful social media influencers, including Hailey Baldwin and Bella Hadid.

The hype touted a luxurious weekend getaway on a private island with a big-name music lineup, grand private villas, five-star dining and beach parties.

But during the weeks leading up to the festival, almost nothing came together as planned. Bands dropped out, workers weren’t paid and the infrastructure necessary to accommodate the crowds failed to arise.

But festival-goers still arrived, only to find the event aborted at the last minute. To make matters worse they were marooned for hours, served nothing but cold cheese sandwiches.

Ticket holders took McFarland and his company to court. But that was the least of his problems. Convicted of criminal charges in connection with the festival, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit $26 million.