DJ Nor.th Star Is Tapped In

Photo by Emma Blick

It’s a Friday night in Syracuse. Under flashing stage lights, with freshly split dyed hair, DJ Nor.th Star spins Madonna and Charli XCX’s new collaboration, “Danceteria Afterhours,” at The Song & Dance for “CHARM: A Queer Dance Party.” A gaggle of tipsy gay men goes wild when they hear the opening line: “You wanna talk about Madonna and Charli?”

Between the rising trend in themed dance parties and heightened demand for queer escapism, Nor.th Star has become a staple of Upstate New York’s nightlife scene, hosting parties with themes like Indie Sleaze, Hyperpop and the 2010s Boy Band Craze.

For DJ Nor.th Star, whose stage name plays on her birth name, Honora McCormack, music has always been an integral part of her life. 

“I grew up not only playing instruments and learning music theory,” McCormack said. “But my parents were also really big music fans, especially my father.”

McCormack’s father, who worked in the film and theater industry, had a self-produced audio blog of his own where he talked in depth about music and shared his picks of the week. From Hall & Oates to Los Lobos to Moby to Loretta Lynn, McCormack’s father loved being on the fringes of different subcultures and followed his ear wherever it took him.

“Until the day he died, he was still going out to concerts, discovering new music and doing his radio show,” McCormack said. “I think his passion for music and his hunger for discovery of music really, really carried over into my life.”

Nor.th Star began her career behind the scenes, dipping her toes in almost every aspect of the music industry, from live event promotion to artist management. In college, McCormack interned for After Dark Presents, for whom she now DJs regularly. She tried her hand in the festival circuit, helping with the administrative side of the industry. McCormack then helped launch Electric Hawk, a music publication that focuses on local EDM artists. Under Electric Hawk, she helped manage their record label, eventually making a foray into artist management and talent development.

After college, McCormack began experimenting and mixing music. 

“I didn't share it with anybody,” McCormack said. “I just kind of put out a mix here and there, and really tried to learn everything I could.” After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live music, McCormack slowly started sharing her mixes with the public via livestream, and started to garner a small fan base.

Once bars and clubs started to open back up, McCormack’s DJing took on a life of its own, eventually leading her to leave her full-time job in pursuit of newfound success. McCormack’s career skyrocketed in the summer of 2024 when she created her “PowerPOP Girls” themed party, building off the virality of Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and the Powerpuff Girls memes that followed suit. She invited local drag queens to perform with her as the party traveled across Upstate New York.

These pop-centric theme parties have become McCormack’s signature in the scene, with some fans even planning entire weekends around them.

When creating these theme nights, McCormack starts with a central idea―a genre or an artist―and looks at not only the music within those confines, but also dives deeper into collaborators and inspirations. “What are their references for their music? Who are they directly referencing? Who might be on their mood boards?” she asks herself.

For example, if McCormack is creating a set around Charli XCX’s Brat era and aesthetic, she’s not going to play the album front to back and call it a day. McCormack looks into the entire artist’s discography for deep cuts and lesser-known collaborators, so she may play a song from Shygirl’s new album or a SOPHIE deep cut to keep the crowd on their toes.

What The Dance, a nationwide event curator, often taps Nor.th Star to host their events in the area, and McCormack’s process is largely the same. The only difference is she is given a theme and marketing materials, and she builds a setlist around the given theme.

In September, McCormack was at the Song & Dance for “Dance… 4 U: A Slayyyter and Charli XCX Night.” She crafted her set around these two artists, with their most anthemic songs serving as guideposts for the night.

“I can't just play ‘I Love It,’ and ‘360’ and ‘Beat Up Chanels,’” McCormack said. ”I need to be going into their back catalog and pulling out stuff that doesn't even have discourse on it; a casual fan would never know it exists.”

A lot of Nor.th Star’s parties cater to a queer audience, but surprisingly, this is not intentional.

While she does identify as queer herself, McCormack said that is not a major facet of her personal identity. Growing up in a very artistic family, her father in theater and her mother in cosmetology, she was raised among the queer community. 

“I feel like queer culture is almost ingrained in me in a way that I don't even know if I necessarily recognize some of it,” McCormack said, “Especially when it comes to music. Being in the salon, we're listening to not only Madonna and Cher, but we're listening to Scissor Sisters and ‘90s dance records.”

There seems to be a sort of symbiosis between Nor.th Star and the queer community. She actively gives back to the people supporting her, hiring drag performers to accompany her and highlighting queer musicians in her sets, but most of all, she provides a space for queer people to feel so free.

“I feel like there's not enough queer spaces in Syracuse,” said Molly Hoffman, a born-and-raised Syracusan and fan of Nor.th Star, “and it's nice that Nor.th Star and the Song & Dance have a space for the queer community to be able to do their thing.”

In the era of bedroom and fraternity-house DJs, Nor.th Star stands out because of her ability to mold herself to match a crowd. It is not very common that a DJ who tours still mixes everything live, but Nor.th Star does. This gives her the ability to feed off of a crowd’s energy and make last-minute edits to her setlist. “I rely on the crowd a lot and their energy when I'm playing. I feel like there's telepathy going on sometimes.” 

This telepathic communication is clear to see as an audience member. If the crowd starts to lull for whatever reason, she quickly switches the vibe and picks the energy back up. If the crowd is going wild for a certain sound–maybe something more hardcore–she sustains that energy rather than immediately dampening it with a pre-loaded transition.

“I feel like I can just let go and do me, and I never really have to worry about who's watching, because everybody's just doing their own thing,” Hoffman said. “I feel like it's a culture of just being you.”

Crowd work seems to be a lost art form in the new era of DJing, but that’s Nor.th Star’s specialty; she truly is tapped in with the crowd.