REVIEW: When We Were Young 2025 Was A Weekend Where Nostalgia Met a New Era of Heavy
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY ELIJAH CLOWER ☆
AT ITS CORE, WHEN WE WERE YOUNG HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT ONE THING: nostalgia. It’s the festival built from the soundtrack of our teenage bedrooms: emo, pop-punk, eyeliner-smudged rebellion. But this year in Las Vegas, that foundation evolved. The lineup still honored the era of Panic!, Avril, Mayday Parade, and All Time Low - but it also reached beyond, pulling in modern metalcore giants, alt-rock crossovers and even heavier acts that widened the audience and recharged the atmosphere. With over 60,000 people flooding the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, the energy felt massive, emotional and strangely intimate all at once.
Panic! at the Disco was the headline performance of the festival hands down. Watching Brendon Urie back onstage, with full theatrics and zero hesitation, felt like witnessing the comeback people weren’t sure would ever happen. While many were hoping for a full band reunion with the original members, I’m sure it was a set they still won’t forget for a long time. From “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” to full-scale dramatics from A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, he didn’t miss. The crowd was so alive singing every lyric like their lives depended on it, you truly had to be there.
Avril Lavigne was also one of the biggest crowd draws of the weekend—and she delivered exactly what fans wanted. The only drawback: photographers were pushed to shoot from front-of-house, which made capturing close shots tricky, but even from that distance, you could feel the stage presence and energy she had. This type of decision comes from her and her team so while it’s fully respected, it’s just a big bummer as she also had one of the best stage designs, that would have been great captures up close. She even brought out special guest Pierre Bouvier from Simple Plan and performed their new collab Young and Dumb.
Weezer, The Offspring, All Time Low, Mayday Parade, and Plain White T’s all tapped into that early-2000s core memory that this festival is built on. Weezer delivered hit after hit with effortless cool — no theatrics, just tight musicianship and decades of crowd-favorite songwriting that had thousands singing along like it was second nature. The Offspring earlier in the day had that same vein of nostalgia-fueled chaos, ripping through songs like “The Kids Aren’t Alright” and “Self Esteem” with the same sneer and speed they had in the ‘90s.
All Time Low and Mayday Parade brought the emotional teenage soundtrack energy, the kind that makes you want to scream-cry and laugh at the same time. Tracks like “Dear Maria, Count Me In” and “Jamie All Over” pulled some of the loudest crowd participation of the day — a reminder that these songs never stopped meaning something. Plain White T’s leaned into the softer side of that era — when “Hey There Delilah” started, the entire crowd turned into a full on choir under the Nevada sun.
I Prevail on the other definitely delivered one of my favorite sidestage sets of the entire festival and honestly a close second to being my favorite. Since the departure of their lead vocalist, they’ve leaned into a heavier, more aggressive tone—and boy oh boy, it sounds incredible live. If their new direction sticks to the raw edge of their recent release Violent Nature, we’re entering a very exciting era for the band. Knocked Loose on the Pink stage was pure chaos in the best way—circle pits erupting instantly, security bracing for impact, and a performance that at the end of it all proves heavy music not only belongs at WWWY—it’s becoming one of the festival’s driving forces. I’ve only seen them live once before this performance and it feels as if they are just around the corner of being headliners which is surprising since they only have 3 studio albums, but also well deserved with how well they perform. The Plot in You, who didn’t just “fit in” among the nostalgia acts — they shattered expectations. Heavy, emotionally charged, and criminally underrated live, their set felt like a chaotic rush with crowd surfers non-stop flying over the barricade. Songs like “Left Behind” and “Forgotten” hit with full force — proving that even in a festival built on memory, there’s room for a new generation of pain, vulnerability, and volume.
A look behind the performances
It goes without saying that I write both as festival goer and as a photographer, so I always like to bring a different perspective and shed light on things beyond the performances. The new dual-main-stage setup worked better than I thought it would—7-Eleven Stage and Pink Stage sat right next to each other, meaning as soon as one set ended, the crowd just had to pivot left or right for the next headliner. No long-distance sprints. But the flip side? There was no real crowd flow. From someone who’s shot other festivals with stages spread out, it does have its advantages to allow crowds to move in and out after seeing a set they were interested in but maybe not the next, and gives others a chance to move closer to the action. I’m no festival planner, again these are my thoughts and experiences, and as this festival grows—and it will—they might have to reimagine the layout entirely. That said, many people were keen to the new layout/stages. Overall logistics were great: media entries were easy to navigate, media tent was accommodating, crowd control felt safe, but I did notice that all festival/artists merch lines were full all day long. I don’t know the actual wait time but I wouldn’t have been surprised if people were in line for 30mins-Hour before getting to the register. In the small quality of life areas of the festival, it seemed like many of the little photo spots and sponsors sections were getting a lot of action and enjoyment as they stayed busy with people all day.
From behind the lens and in the middle of the crowd, When We Were Young 2025 felt like a perfect collision of past and present. It was nostalgic of course, emotional but not overly curated, and just the right amount of heavy without being over bearing. The festival is clearly growing into something bigger every year—and at this rate, it’s not just honoring the scene, it’s shaping what it becomes next and keeping our inner childhood alive!
