Joe Keery, perhaps best known for his role as Steve Harrington in Netflix’s Stranger Things, has more talents than most realize. He has been releasing music under the pseudonym Djo since 2013. You might recognize this artist better when I mention their hit song, “End of Beginning.” Yes, you read that right. Joe Keery is the singer in the popular song, “End of Beginning.”
Joe Keery’s Music Career
For years, Keery was mainly known for his acting career, specifically as Steve Harrington on Netflix‘s Stranger Things, but his music career has been getting more and more attention. Djo (pronounced “Joe”) is the name he uses to write, compose, record, produce, and arrange his own music.
The Crux is the third album released under Keery’s pseudonym, the first two being Twenty Twenty, released in 2019, and Decide, released in 2022. Keery spent a long time keeping these two identities separate, staying off the covers of the first two albums and wearing white jumpsuits, sunglasses, and orange wigs at his concerts. Last year, “End of Beginning” blew up on TikTok, bringing Djo and Joe Keery into full view, and doing away with the remnants of “If you know, you know.”
“It really is basically just what’s going on in my life,” Keery told Entertainment Weekly about his new music over Zoom. “It feels good, though. For me, it’s cathartic to have an outlet to get it out.”
With the release of this latest album, Joe Keery has decided to forgo his usual disguise, stepping into the spotlight with his own version of a rock star. If you look closely at the cover of this album, you can see Keery hanging out the window of a four-story building, though his back is the most visible part, you can see him more than in the last two covers where you can not see him properly or at all.
“It felt like for the presentation of the album going back to the wig and glasses was a really fun conceit, but it just wasn’t right for this project,” Keery said. “I’m happy that it’s a front-facing thing where it’s really about me and my life, and the most authentic way to represent it, I thought, was to just kind of face it full-on.”
Keery’s album The Crux has multiple influences, including The Beatles in “Charlie’s Garden,” Fleetwood Mac, Tame Impala, and more. If you listen, you can hear the different types of music and artists that inspired Keery in his songs here.
Though there are many sadder songs, with themes like heartbreak, on this new album, it is not all sad. The song, “Back on You,” pays tribute to his four sisters and his pals, and his siblings even lend their vocals and some stomps to the track. “Now whenever I listen to any of this music, I’m just thinking, ‘How amazing is it that my sisters are on this, and how cool that we got to have this fun experience together?” Keery said. “I love that, It’s memorializing something in my life so that it really, really means something to me.”
“Charlie’s Garden” pays homage to his Stranger Things costar Charlie Heaton. “Charlie and Natalia (Dyer, who plays Nancy Wheeler on the show) lived together and I lived with a friend, and our backyards touched,” Keery remembers. “Over the summer, we’d have off days, and I would be hanging out, playing guitar, and I’d look back in the yard and he’d be digging, he’d be burying wire. He’d be doing all these chores.”
Joe Keery is preparing to go on his sold-out Back on You tour with his friends and his former bandmates in Post Animal to come along for the ride. “I’ve wanted to do this for a really long time,” Joe Keery said. “I never got a chance to tour with Post Animal for really more than a couple shows, so they’re touring with us. It’s really a bucket list item for me.”
Keery is also meant to appear at Coachella. “It’ll be a huge memory, I’m sure,” he said about the festival. However, it might turn into another hit song if Keery continues his trend of writing about his life and his experiences.
The Crux is out now, so take a listen and decide for yourself if this actor truly has more talent in the entertainment industry than his work on Stranger Things.
