Festival Review: When We Were Young 2025 Brings Career-Defining Sets From Panic! At The Disco, Blink-182
When We Were Young Festival 2025
w/ Panic! At The Disco, Blink-182, Weezer, Avril Lavigne, The Offspring, The Used, & more
Las Vegas Festival Grounds
Las Vegas, NV
Saturday, October 18th, 2025
Review and Photos by Jared Stossel
It is one thing for a teenage garage band to put together a few songs after school and dream big. It’s another thing entirely when, two decades later, said band is playing their debut album in front of nearly seventy thousand people, having written and recorded it when they had never even played a live show. On Saturday night, Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie was able to do just that, returning to the stage in his hometown after a three-year break to perform A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out at When We Were Young for a career-defining performance that, at one point in the evening, featured half of the original lineup of Panic! Co-headlining the evening with them? Blink-182. You can’t write a better story than that.
For the fourth year in a row, the outstanding When We Were Young Festival returned to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, nestled at the end of the Strip near Circus Circus. Thousands of fans of emo, pop-punk, and metalcore descended upon Sin City for over twelve hours of music, ranging from some of the scene’s most iconic and memorable performers to new artists that will one day take the throne.
It is impossible to go to When We Were Young and not find great music in every corner, whether one is standing at the massive, over-the-top production-filled 7-Eleven and Pink Stages, or the slightly more intimate (yet still elaborately produced) Ghost and Allianz Stages on the other side of the festival grounds. Whether an attendee showed up right when the doors opened first thing in the morning or halfway through the day, one would be remiss not to have a good time.
There was not a cloud in the sky as Brian Dales of The Summer Set yelled “Good morning!” to the crowd at the 7-Eleven stage, with the band playing an electrifying set in front of their logo, inspired by the now-mostly-defunct Tower Records. Over at the Ghost Stage, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and The Movielife ripped through energy-fueled sets that woke the crowd up, immediately propelling the energy on the grounds to new heights. Newer artists like Her Leather Jacket, Arm’s Length, and Taylor Acorn properly introduced themselves to the festivalgoers over at the Allianz Stage with exemplary performances.
One of the best things about When We Were Young is that those in attendance tend to truly get once-in-a-lifetime performances from artists, sparing no expense with their stage designs, visuals, and production value. You can go and see Simple Plan headline an 8,000 capacity venue and play all the hits when they tour; at When We Were Young, you can see them with giant stage inflatables, fireworks, massive amounts of confetti, and a bunch of people wearing Scooby-Doo outfits and dancing around on stage. You can see Yellowcard play a hit-filled set that opens with them playing the Top Gun theme song, surrounded by a blaze of pyrotechnics and a massive VHS tape adorning the stage (complete with their new album name, Better Days). Even artists that don’t utilize all the bells and whistles like Boys Like Girls or The Story So Far tend to play better than usual; there’s something in the air here, an incentive for every artist to bring their A-game, regardless of where they are on the lineup.
The Ghost Stage featured some of the best acts of the day, including a rare performance from Straylight Run, flawless sets from The Starting Line and The Maine (probably one of the best touring bands in existence today), and a highly anticipated return to the stage for The Cab, another Las Vegas act that formed during the heyday of the scene. Many said that their candle burned too bright, releasing two near-perfect records in quick succession before announcing an indefinite hiatus only a few years later. For the first time in over a decade, vocalist Alex DeLeon and keyboardist/guitarist Alex Marshall played through the epic brand of pop-rock that they solidified on albums like Whisper War and Symphony Soldier. Alexisonfire thrilled fans in attendance before Taking Back Sunday took the stage for a special performance that featured both guitarists/vocalists John Nolan and Fred Maschinero. Never in my life did I think I would get to see this band play “What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?” with Fred on the microphone again, but I’m glad to say that I did. The rest of the evening on the Ghost stage closed with metalcore-packed sets from Beartooth, I Prevail, Motionless In White, Crown The Empire, and Asking Alexandria.
The Allianz Stage played host to a mix of old and new favorites, but the highlight of the day was the sheer number of “reunion” acts that took the stage here throughout the evening. Some of the acts never officially broke up, using the oft-muttered term “indefinite hiatus”, but it still offered fans a rare chance to see a full set from acts like the Bay Area’s own Set Your Goals, Andrew McMahon’s Jack’s Manneqiun, and letlive., currently together for one last tour and playing with the same batshit crazy intensity that they’ve always brought with them to any stage they set foot on. An empty trash can was thrown into the audience; the drumset was dragged across the stage while the drummer was still playing; Jason Butler finished the set while climbing up the scaffolding of the stage (a good one hundred feet in the air). Breathe Carolina played one of the most special performances of their career, finding David Schmitt reuniting with founding member Kyle Even for the first time in well over a decade for hits like “Hello Fascination”, “Wooly”, and “Blackout”.
Much like last year, I could write a dissertation about each artist on the main stages at When We Were Young. All Time Low played a technicolor-laced, pyro-infused set that featured songs from their new album Everybody’s Talking! along with old favorites like “Weightless” and “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. The Used brought one of the most elaborate stage setups of the day to life, fire blasting from all corners of the stage as they ripped through songs solely from The Used, In Love and Death, and Lies For The Liars. The Offspring played a frenetically paced nine-song set, maybe the best I’ve ever seen from them, while Avril Lavigne pulled out all the stops with a neon-pink pop-punk set that dusted off fan favorite songs like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi”. Weezer was the last official opener before the headliners, but it feels weird to write that any of these acts are “opening” the show - they’re all headlining performers in their own right, able to sell out amphitheaters and arenas at the drop of a hat. Rivers Cuomo and Co. played nothing but the hits, diving headfirst into “My Name Is Jonas”, “Hash Pipe”, and “Surf Wax America” in outstanding fashion.
After an official introduction from MMA ring announcer Bruce Buffer and a curtain drop, Blink-182 played a genre-defining performance, proving why they are still able to pack out arenas and even stadiums so many decades later. They are wildly entertaining to watch, and they sound better than I’ve ever heard them. Pick any point in the setlist, and you’ll find some kind of hit song - “The Rock Show”, “First Date”, “Down”, “Stay Together For The Kids”, “Feeling This”, “I Miss You”, I could go on and on. It is damn good to see Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge, and Mark Hoppus together on a stage again, dominating stages around the world as perhaps the one band today that is most synonymous with the term pop-punk. It was just as fun to watch the audience around me during Blink-182’s set, losing their shit to every song and lyric that came from Hoppus and DeLonge - it’s clear that they’ve defined a generation, and their When We Were Young performance only further cements this notion. The San Diego three-piece closed their set with a high-octane performance of “Dammit”, complete with an ungodly amount of pyrotechnics, fireworks, and (yes) sperm-shaped confetti.
A five-minute countdown timer towered over the audience. By the time it hit zero, the crowd was in a frenzy as the radio static that signals the beginning of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out radiated through the festival grounds. Brendon Urie rose up on a platform beneath the stage, gold microphone in hand, as the original Panic! At The Disco light-up sign that punctuated the band’s stage shows for their first two years made an appearance for the first time since 2006. The Urie-led act dove straight into “The Only Difference Between Martydom and Suicide Is Press Coverage”, never letting up on the gas for the entirety of the album. While it was a little bit of a bummer not to have founding members like Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, and longtime bassist Jon Walker back on stage during the full album performance, this current iteration’s performance of Fever was massively entertaining. The stage lit up with visuals punctuating every song, playing into the Vaudevillian circus and Las Vegas Strip imagery that made up the aesthetic of the first album.
I was thirteen when I saw the original lineup perform on the Nothing Rhymes With Circus Tour, their second proper headliner, despite having only been a band for barely two years. It was the live performance that showed what live music is capable of, complete with the cabaret and vaudeville theatrics that accompanied each song as they played through every song on A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. At the same time, Panic! didn’t move around much on the stage - they were fresh, not used to playing to crowds like this, and Urie was only beginning to show signs of how to be a proper frontman. Now, twenty years later and playing the album in his hometown, he is the consummate Las Vegas showman, performing with confidence and sounding pitch-perfect in every song. It was an absolute treat to hear the songs that made me want to pick up a microphone for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Fever is only a forty-minute album; for the rest of the night Urie pulled out another fifteen songs that pulled from the project’s illustrious catalog, dating back to Pretty, Odd. (“Nine In The Afternoon”), Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die (“Vegas Lights”, “This Is Gospel”, “Emperor’s New Clothes”), Death of a Bachelor (“Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time”, “House of Memories”), and Pray For The Wicked (“Hey Look Ma, I Made It”, “High Hopes”). The biggest surprise of the night, however, came in the form of original drummer Spencer Smith taking the stage with Urie, marking their first performance together in over a decade. An encore of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” was played. Fireworks filled the sky. Urie and Smith smiled and hugged as they took a bow at the front of the stage. It was the moment that every teenager in a rock band dreams of when they’re young. They made it.
Panic! At The Disco Set List
A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
Introduction
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage
London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines
Nails For Breakfasts, Tacks For Snacks
Camisado
Time To Dance
Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off
Intermission
But It’s Better If You Do
I Write Sins Not Tragedies
I Constantly Thank God for Esteban
There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought Of It Yet
Build God, Then We’ll Talk
Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time
Say Amen (Saturday Night)
Hey Look Ma, I Made It
Death of a Bachelor
This Is Gospel
Miss Jackson
King of the Clouds
Nine In The Afternoon
Vegas Lights
Emperor’s New Clothes
Girls/Girls/Boys
House of Memories
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen cover)
Victorious
High Hopes
I Write Sins Not Tragedies (with Spencer Smith on drums)
Blink-182 Set List
The Rock Show
First Date
Josie
Anthem Part Two
Online Songs
M+M’s
FUCK FACE
Dumpweed
Feeling This
Down
TURPENTINE
CAN’T GO BACK
Wishing Well
Stay Together For The Kids
Roller Coaster
DANCE WITH ME
I Miss You
MORE THAN YOU KNOW
Hope (Descendents cover)
What’s My Age Again?
All The Small Things
Dammit
