While my sinuses are grateful to have left the desert warmth, I’m reeling with a selected kind of comedown from this yr’s When We Were Young festival. It’s two days of the yr I spend relishing an amalgamation of gut-wrenching nostalgia pangs, and realizing how a lot of my mind’s storage has been put to work holding onto Relient Okay lyrics as an alternative of my social safety quantity. And I’ve so as to add, there’s actually nowhere else I really feel extra seen and understood than in a crowd of people that, identical to me, hoard Good Dye Young merchandise and by no means shrink back from a pyramid stud. Of course, this yr was no laughing matter when it got here to emo music icons, and creating moments the place all of the Warped Tour worlds might collide.
And collide they did, after which some: from hip-hop legends to pop-punk royalty, audiences had been always stunned as they stood in the crowd at every of the 4 levels all through the weekend, watching Lil Wayne singing “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” with Good Charlotte, seeing Avril Lavigne crash the All Time Low set, and Steve Aoki collab with Yellowcard. Green Day kicked the total weekend off with a Dookie album play, and in lockstep with blink-182, every introduced a 2024 stadium tour and carried out new music that had but to be performed stay at the festival. Alongside the greats, thrilling youthful acts hit the desert too this yr, artists who we’ve seen so astutely interpret this nook of alt music we’ve at all times beloved in fashionable and insightful methods — from Jean Dawson to the Wrecks, EKKSTACY to KennyHoopla.
Though it’s straightforward to get emotional, no pun meant, that the weekend’s a wrap, we will not less than enjoy the items it gave us, and look ahead to the yr forward, stuffed with anniversary album performs, our favourite bands hitting the highway, and new music — breadcrumbs that may fulfill that nostalgic itch all of us have, not less than till subsequent October.
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