Joe Keery is using his Stranger Things salary to make independent music as a DJ. How the success of the series made his song “End of Beginning” possible.
Joe Keery In addition to acting, she has been releasing music under the alias Djo since 2019. In an interview, he revealed what musical wishes he was able to achieve through his role as Steve Harrington in the Netflix production “Stranger Things” and how his independence from a music label positively influences his creative process.
No record deal thanks to series success
Keery began making music before his ten-year role on the hit series. In addition to his solo and acting career, he is a member of the psychedelic rock band Post Animal. He has already released three records under his artist name.
In a detailed conversation with “Vulture,” the 33-year-old was grateful that the cult series allowed him to be “an independent artist” without having to sign a record deal with a music label. He also benefits from the fact that the “expenses and overheads” for his second career are low and that he can do a lot from home. Joe Keery told New Yorker magazine that he only had to spend “a few weeks in the studio” and pay for the flights of people he wanted with him – so that his focus could be solely on the music.
Dream of children’s choir and expensive musical instruments
The song “Back On You” from his current, third studio album “The Crux” is introduced by a children’s choir. That would have been a dream that the Boston native had been carrying around for a long time and was finally able to realize thanks to his salary from the mystery series. This money was also spent on renting musical instruments that he had never played before, as he further revealed in the interview.
Joe Keery uses his earnings from five seasons to finance “expensive or crazy ideas,” he continued. The top priority for his music is to ensure “the longevity of the project” – even before his track “End of Beginning” became a hit.
Changed relationship to “End of Beginning”
As a reminder: “End of Beginning” is part of the singer’s second studio album entitled DECIDE from 2022. However, the track only became a viral hit in 2024 thanks to a TikTok trend. Users of the social media platform created a short video compilation about Chicago or their own hometown for the refrain lines: “And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it / Another version of me, I was in it / I wave goodbye to the end of beginning” and used the song as a soundtrack. He recently toppled “The Fate of Ophelia” by Taylor Swift from the throne of the Spotify charts and surpassed two billion streams on the said streaming platform.
Listen to “End of Beginning” by Djo here:
The artist is happy about the song’s success, but noted in the interview that “it feels like it has taken on a life of its own.” The meaning of the track has changed due to the TikTok trend and “Stranger Things”: It is considered “the end of an era and the beginning of something new”. For Keery himself, his perception of his hit is constantly changing – between “liking and being fed up”, sometimes he simply skips the song when the phase of over-saturation is at hand again and he “can’t listen to it anymore”.
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