Djo’s Joe Keery on How Viral Song ‘End of Beginning’ Mirrors ‘Stranger Things’ Final Season: ‘I’m a Different Person Than I Was’

variety.com:

Ellise Shafer If you’ve been on TikTok in the last few weeks, chances are you’ve heard Djo’s “End of Beginning,” a synth-heavy psychedelic track soaked in nostalgia.

But you may not know that the man behind Djo is none other than Joe Keery, best known for playing lovable jock Steve Harrington on Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” Keery has been releasing music under the moniker since 2019, but it wasn’t until last month that the sudden TikTok popularity of “End of Beginning” — a non-single track off his 2022 album “Decide” — took the musical project into the mainstream, with the song’s 2.2 million video creations on the app catapulting it to No.

23 on the Billboard Hot 100. Keery says he wrote the song about his experience leaving Chicago — where he attended DePaul University and became embedded in the local indie-rock scene as an original member of the band Post Animal — to move to L.A.

after the success of “Stranger Things.” But now, with the final season of the sci-fi series fast approaching, Keery says the song’s message once again feels relevant. “It’s about what it means to grow up and look back at a section of your life and kind of yearn for that, but then also to have a deep appreciation for what happened,” Keery says, adding of “Stranger Things”: “It’s kind of a similar thing I was going through when I was looking back at my time in Chicago.