When We Were Young Fest 2024: Highlights

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but it’s been over a week since we attended When We Were Young Fest 2024 and we haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. We got to chat with so many cool artists (keep an eye out on our socials), meet lots of new people, and dance and sing our hearts out to some of our favorite acts from throughout our lives.

The purple carpet was rolled out and ready for 2 days of our favorite bands playing the albums that are arguably the soundtrack to our teen years. And let’s be real, these albums STILL get played on the daily around here. Nostalgia was a heavy theme for the festival this year, solidified by the fact that a decent chunk of these albums were released in the early 2000s-2010s and had us all reminiscing on that period of our lives. It made for a really special weekend and it was incredible to get to hear some songs that we’d never thought we’d get to hear.

Whether you were in the crowd and want to relive the memories of the weekend or whether you’re living vicariously through all the posts and videos, we’re here to recap some of our highlights from WWWYF 2024!

We Are The In Crowd

We Are The In Crowd (or We Are In The Crowd, IFKYK) was one of the bands we were most excited to see! We’ve been longtime fans of theirs and seeing them reunite on stage was EVERYTHING. Like most of the bands on the lineup, they played an entire album and their pick was Weird Kids. This album has our favorites like ‘Manners,’ ‘Come Back Home,’ ‘Windows In Heaven,’ and ‘Dreaming Out Loud.’ They also pulled out fan favorites ‘Kiss Me Again’ and ‘Rumor Mill’ which are so important to us personally.

We were in fact the target audience for this set. The teenage versions of us using Tay Jardine as our style inspiration and screaming the lyrics to ‘Best Thing (That Never Happened)’ really needed this. Honestly, we got kind of emotional standing there in the crowd singing “long live the kids in us all” back to Tay and there was a sort of cathartic enjoyment we got from it. (It was also nice to be out of the afternoon sun since the Verizon tent was covered). WATIC’s set was a major highlight for sure and we’re already hoping that we’ll get to see them playing together again one day!

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State Champs

State Champs is one of THP’s favorite bands and when we realized that we’d be hearing The Finer Things live in its entirety we knew we HAD to be at this set. Hearing ‘Over The Line’ live did something to our brain chemistry truly. And of course, we loved hearing some of our favorites like ‘Prepared to Be Noticed’ and ‘Deadly Conversation.’ Honestly, The Finer Things is a no-skip album front to back so getting to hear every single track altogether was an amazing experience.

And the crowd brought the energy! The Verizon stage (yeah, we spent a lot of time here) was going nuts for State Champs, as it should be. Everyone was off their feet and singing along and it reminded us why we love seeing this band live so much. It got us even more hyped for their new self-titled album coming out on Nov 8th and for their upcoming tour with Knuckle Puck, MM@TA, and Daisy Grenade! Will we see you there?

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT STATE CHAMPS:
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Fall Out Boy

We just love Fall Out Boy so much you guys. In lieu of performing a single album, we got an Eras Tour-style set running through some of the most iconic songs from FOB’s discography. Honestly, we get it. If we were trying to pick a single album from their discography to hear live we’d be bouncing back and forth trying to pin something down. So really, this worked out for everyone. The song choices? Iconic. The stage set up? Iconic. The fireworks at the end of the set? Iconic. Pete Wentz floating up with balloons during ‘Saturday?’ That’s Pete Wentz, there’s not much else we can say.

The set rotated from era to era, album to album, culminating with their most recent release So Much For Stardust. There were pyrotechnics, Franklin the sheep, insane background videos on screen, and we even got 8 ball songs! ‘G.I.N.A.S.F.S’ was the first song and ‘See You Again’ ft. Wiz Khalifa was the second. And when we say ft. Wiz Khalifa, we mean literally. Wiz Khalifa literally came out on stage to sing it with them. It doesn’t get more iconic than that. Honestly, FOB had so much going on that we could probably write an entirely separate article on just their set alone. Whatever exhaustion we were feeling evaporated the second they got on stage and we had an amazing time traveling through their discography with them.

LEARN MORE ABOUT FALL OUT BOY:
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Hey Monday

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d get to see Hey Monday live in 2024 but we DID and it was magnificent. One of our favorite parts about this set was that Hey Monday brought a bunch of the iconic women from the scene to join them onstage for ‘Homecoming’ like Tay Jardine, Jenna McDougall, and Daisy Grenade. This is our Roman Empire, no exaggeration.

Like WATIC, seeing Hey Monday got us a little emotional and nostalgic for our younger years. Hearing ‘Arizona’ and ‘Obvious’ flashed us right back to being teenagers and ‘Candles’ had us singing our hearts out with Cassadee Pope. It was truly a special moment and we’re so glad we got to be part of it.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HEY MONDAY:
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My Chemical Romance

If you got to hear The Black Parade live in its entirety in the year 2024 you’d be flexing it left and right too. We truly don’t mean to rub it in but this was an amazing, cathartic, almost spiritual experience. My Chemical Romance closed out the festival each night and What. A. Show. There were tears (mostly from us), there was singing, there was screaming, and overall it was an experience that we’re not quite sure how anyone will ever top. There’s something about the feeling of singing ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ in a crowd of thousands of strangers that you just can’t recreate anywhere else (even when you’re screaming it alone in your car, we see you).

MCR also played songs like ‘Disenchanted,’ ‘The Sharpest Lives,’ and ‘Dead!’ for the first time in YEARS, so getting to hear the favorites we grew up with live in 2024 was so special. They kept their stage set up simple, it was all black and white, including the image up on the screens for the crowd to see. It lent itself well to the performance thematically and made for an all-around amazing show. We really ran through the full spectrum of human emotion during this set. My Chemical Romance you will always be famous.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE:
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Check out the portraits we got from WWWY below!

Look at all our besties! We had an AMAZING time at When We Were Young Fest 2024 and we’re going to be thinking about it for the foreseeable future tbh. It was a stacked lineup with iconic performances of iconic albums and an all-around incredible day. We don’t know if we’ll hear more albums in full again like this at a festival so we’re glad we got to experience this one. Did you attend WWWYF 2024? What was your favorite set of the day?

Let us know by commenting down below or by tweeting us @TheHoneyPOP! We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and Discord. We would love to hear from you!