New-Wave Nostalgia: The When We Were Young Festival
- Rylee Pohancsek
- Apr 7, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 25, 2023
The feeling of nostalgia is something that everyone feels from time to time, but how can that feeling be used as a marketing strategy? As the pandemic forced everyone into quarantine, many people turned to music as a way to cope, causing a revival of pop-punk music popularized in the 2000s. The When We Were Young Festival announcements on social media represent the use of nostalgia as a way to gain virality online during a time when new festivals are being announced everyday.
The When We Were Young Festival, happening on October 22nd, 23rd and 29th 2022 in Las Vegas, features a wide range of pop-punk artists. Its lineup includes artists such as My Chemical Romance, Avril Lavigne and Pierce the Veil. The festival is debuting for the first time under the management of Live Nation Entertainment.
Announced on January 18th of 2022, the festival generated memes and reactions online by internet users, causing the festival to go viral. Many memes created for the festival focus on the idea of nostalgia. Guitarist of the band We Are The In Crowd and self-proclaimed “nostalgia curator”, Cameron Hurley, tweeted a meme about the lineup and its resemblance to songs he had on his iPod as a millennial.
The feeling of nostalgia, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition”. This feeling was something that everyone felt at one point during COVID-19, as many people forgot what “normal” was like. Music during the pandemic became some people's outlet for dealing with these feelings.
With music streaming allowing people to listen to any genre of music, one seemed to have a resurgence: pop-punk.
Billboard, “Billboard Explains The Resurgence Of Pop-Punk”, 2022, Youtube,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wnzxnlSSy8&t=24s.
Billboard Music says that some reasons why there is a recent resurgence of pop-punk music are energetic live shows, emotional lyrics and fresh guitar sounds. The emotional lyrics play into something called “doomerism” where people accept that the way things are is not going to change. This doomerism can explain people's emotional response to COVID-19.
As for live music, festivals have become more popular among both fans and artists in the past decade. Although festivals have been around for a long time, the way people listen to music has changed listeners' preferences when it comes to live music. For fans, festivals provide them the opportunity to experience several of their favorite artists performing at once. For artists, they don’t have to worry about a major tour thus making it less of a time commitment.
Although festivals have become popularized in recent years, When We Were Young stood out to festival-goers for a reason. It is the first time that Live Nation Entertainment has put on this festival, it is one of its kind with the bands that are performing, it is during a pop-punk resurgence and it’s happening after a pandemic.
Pathos and the rhetorical effects of appealing to people's emotions have been used for centuries to get an audience’s attention. With the internet, connecting with other people who have similar feelings to yours is an easy outlet. This, with the shared experience of music and the pandemic, created a unique spot for Live Nation Entertainment to create The When We Were Young Festival.
What do you think about The When We Were Young Festival? Did it make you feel nostalgic? Leave a comment below.
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