For this Utah DJ, pop is personal

Utah DJ Ricky Barrera said he doesn’t get fazed by criticism that, because he plays pop music, “he isn’t a real DJ.”

“Whenever I get feedback like that, it doesn’t bug me at all because I know that this is where I’m supposed to be,” Barrera said.

When Barrera hosted an event at a clubhouse in Orem about two years ago, he decided to mix things up by playing music by the current reigning queen of pop — Taylor Swift. It was an experiment to see who would come and what kind of energy they would bring.

“Like 200 girls showed up, and they changed my life,” Barrera said. “I saw that energy and I was like, ‘What is this? Why are you crying on the floor? Why are you guys loving each other and not moshing and pushing and trying to grab on each other? What’s going on here? This is so different.’ The energy was so upbeat and I was so happy.”

It’s a contrast to what Barrera called the “zombie crowds” who showed up for his early gigs, when he played the beat-heavy electronic dance music he was expected to play. “You don’t want to play for people that are zoned out,” Barrera said.

Barrera has expanded his pop-music club performances, bringing together the concept of “Haylor” dance nights — mixing together Taylor Swift with Harry Styles, with some of Styles’ former boy band, One Direction, and such pop throwbacks as Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry as well.

It’s a change in Utah’s music scene that has impressed Paul Brucks, general manager of the Salt Lake City venue The Complex, where Barrera has played four times this year. (He’s scheduled to play at The Complex again on Dec. 29.)

“What Ricky is tapped into is very specific and I think it’s kind of the next evolution,” Barrera said.

“Pop music is one of those things that people might hate on the surface to like, to keep up appearances, but it’s fun,” Brucks said. “It’s an energy that you don’t see in a lot of other shows.”

Musical roots

Barrera said he can unabashedly attest to the power of screaming along to a well-crafted song bridge — he calls Swift “the queen of bridges” — or the nostalgic jolt of a One Direction chorus. His enthusiasm comes, he said, from the role music played in his life from an early age, an influence he credits to being raised by his single mother and older sister in Miami.

Because of his Hispanic upbringing, he said, music “was part of everything that we did.”

“My sister raised me on Britney [Spears], on Destiny’s Child, Christina [Aguilera], Backstreet Boys and NSYNC — [these artists] have always been at the forefront of my upbringing,” Barrera said. “This melting pot of music has always been in my DNA.”

The Barreras moved to Utah in 2010. A few years later, he started performing as a DJ — a process that began with heartbreak, he said, which led to parties, and watching DJs work and thinking that he could do that, too.

“I tried it in my early 20s, then I quit it for like six, seven years,” he said. That’s when he encountered the “zombie crowds.”

“Being a DJ in a corner, it sucks sometimes — you want to perform, you want to put on a show. But a lot of the times in that club world, what’s pushed more is the alcohol,” he said. “As a performer I was looking for something more.”

Barrera returned to DJing in 2019, and started experimenting with pop music. He said he saw a TikTok of a Taylor Swift night at a club in Sydney, Australia, where “there were these girls yelling to ‘Getaway Car’ and I was like, ‘What is this? She’s not there.’” He then learned of similar nights themed to a single artist or — like the Los Angeles venue Club 90s — a decade.

Around the end of 2021, going into 2022, is when he said, “I was really starting to [feel] like I can do this, I can actually play this music.”

Researching Taylor and Harry

Barrera said he started researching Taylor Swift by watching Swift-centered movies on Netflix. Seeing her live, performing on this summer’s Eras Tour, is what made him a full fan, he said.

The idea of adding Styles to the Swift songs happened at a show, where a girl requested Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar.” “I said to her, ‘What does Harry Styles have to do with Taylor Swift?’” (He later found out that songs on Swift’s “1989″ album, notably “Style,” might have been inspired by Styles, after the two briefly dated, back in 2012.)

Barrera talked glowingly about seeing Styles in concert, when he was promoting his 2022 album “Harry’s House,” which went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

“As you progress into the actual arena, there’s this energy that flows. He comes out to a song called ‘Daydreaming.’ It was like the Pentecost,” Barrera said. “For me, watching Harry Styles, it was the equivalent of watching Michael Jordan at a game six. …

“It’s the same energy when we go see the Jazz play, right? Everyone wears costumes,” he said. “They’re just different ways to express your appreciation for the art that you’re watching.”

Barrera said his goal with the “Haylor” club shows is to “do my very best to bring these two worlds together” and recreate the environment that he experienced at both artist’s concerts — with a focus of having fun and creating a safe space for women.

Brucks, at The Complex, called the environment Barrera creates “wholesome.” Brucks said he even brought his 5-year-old daughter to Barrera’s “Haylorween” show in October.

“It’s really chill,” Brucks said of Barrera’s shows, which generally draw between 600 and 700 people for the night. “It’s just people who come and have a good time. They dress up and they dance. … These kids can’t generally afford to go to a Taylor Swift show. So I thought that [Barrera’s] concept is really good, because it gives people an opportunity to go listen to the songs they love and hang out with other fans, for a fraction of the cost.”

Singing, and sitting on the floor

There’s a moment during Barrera’s set that’s unlike most club nights. The people aren’t dancing. They’re sitting. And singing.

It happened during Barrera’s October show when he played Swift’s 10-minute version of her breakup ballad “All Too Well” — a song whose emotional lift is punctuated by fans screaming the lyrics. It’s so intense that some clubgoers have to sit down on the dance floor to handle it. They hold up their phones, on which they have called up photos of the guy usually credited with breaking Swift’s heart, keeping her scarf and inspiring the song: The actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

Barrera leaves the stage during the song, in part to take a water break after dancing around for much of the show — but also because, as he puts it, “I am part of the problem. Let’s be part of the solution.”

Connecting through pop music, Barrera said, has made him more aware of things — like how to be a feminist ally.

He said it was “part of my healing journey of just accepting this femininity into my world that I was so hesitant to accept fully in my life. You can accept femininity in your life and not it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength.”

The “concert girlies,” as he affectionately calls his fans, have “taught me so much about what it is to be a man, more so than watching a football game.”

Playing pop has also paid off for his career. He DJed for Brigham Young University for homecoming weekend in October — and an Instagram reel of that show, with the crowd singing the bridge to Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” has scored more than 230,000 views. Recently, he became the DJ for the Toyota Club, an experience at Delta Center for premium Utah Jazz fans.

“Pop music now is at the forefront. It’s more of a universal music,” he said. “We’re listening to the new girls — Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo — we’re listening to all these new very strong [women]. It’s so cool to see women at the forefront of most all music genres.”

(It’s notable that of the eight nominees for Album of the Year at the 2024 Grammys — a body with a spotty record for gender equity — six of them are women soloists, Swift and Rodrigo among them, and a seventh is a all-woman trio.)

“As a man, [I’m] learning that there’s another way to man, there’s a more effective way to man — and that as men embrace that femininity, their lives will be better,” he said. “I’m more calm. I listen more. I dress differently. My creativeness has peaked — like, it’s at another level. And I owe all of that to the energy that Taylor and Harry have tapped into.”