Joe Keery Leans Into Nostalgia as His Alter Ego, Djo
The word is out: the Stranger Things star has a musical moniker and an upcoming sophomore album.
by Hannah JacksonW MAGAZINE – The morning after Joe Keery’s set at Lollapalooza, the musician and actor is in the mood to celebrate. Sprawled out on a couch at the Chicago Athletic Association, he raises his eyebrows suggestively. “I could go for a Bloody Mary,” he says, glancing around to see who can be goaded to drink before lunch. And thus, a round of drinks appear.
Keery is hardwired with the Midwestern friendliness he absorbed during his time as a student at DePaul University in Chicago, where the music festival took place in July. (We spend a chunk of our allotted time together talking about beloved dive bars in our shared northside neighborhood and the absurdities of high school theater.) Between his unshakable eye contact and reciprocal conversation, it’s easy to forget that he is a global sensation thanks to his role as Steve Harrington on Stranger Things—that is, of course, until he clocks a gaggle of indiscreet fans on the hotel balcony and seamlessly lowers his sunglasses over his eyes.
Summer has been busy for Keery, who celebrated the release of Stranger Things season four and his inaugural Lollapalooza performance. But while the seasons transition, Keery finds he is just getting started. His sophomore album, the psychedelic confection Decide, which he is releasing under his moniker Djo, is out September 16th. Below, Keery talks with W about nostalgia, musical influences, and the many Geminis in his life.
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W Magazine Interview
Joe for Billboard
Magazines & Scans > Magazines from 2022 > Billboard (August 27, 2022)
Joe Keery Is Turning Expectations Upside Down With Music Project Djo
BILLBOARD – With second album ‘Decide’ out Sept. 16, the ‘Stranger Things’ star will reach new heights in his musical career, too.
When Joe Keery performs as his musical solo project, Djo, he looks nothing like the character that millions of TV watchers have come to know — and that’s the point.
If not for an all-caps sign in the Lollapalooza crowd that read “Listening To Djo All Day Keeps Vecna Away,” for instance, festivalgoers likely wouldn’t have been quick to associate the artist with a shaggy wig, glasses and stark-white painter’s jumpsuit onstage with Steve Harrington, the bully turned beloved chaperone from Netflix’s Stranger Things.
In addition to his prominent role in the worldwide phenomenon, Keery, 30, has recently starred in Free Guy and Spree as he has simultaneously reached new heights in his acting career. Currently, he’s working on a project in Italy, ahead of a few others coming in the fall. But that’s Joe Keery, the actor. Joe Keery, the musician — Djo — is its own separate entity. There’s hardly a trace of the everyday Keery, and no mention of characters associated with a film career, on Djo’s social media accounts or digital service provider profiles.
“There’s a level of comfort being in this alternate look, where I feel more free to do what I want,” he says. “I think about David Bowie or Marc Bolan dressing up. Devo is another great example. Something that started off with that intention has opened this door to make me realize that it can be more than just that.”
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Joe Keery is Ready for His Next Chapter
Leaving ‘Stranger Things’ Behind
THE DAILY BEAST – Playing crush-worthy teen Steve on the Netflix hit turned Keery into a star. With the final season coming, he’s ready for a new phase: a brand-new album as his music persona, DJO.
Joe Keery won’t stop talking about Stanley Tucci. We’re 20 minutes into our coffee in the Lower East Side, and because the Tooch is one of my favorite topics of conversation as well, it physically pains me to steer the conversation back on track.
Directing. Let’s talk about directing. We were talking about getting behind the camera when Keery began to gush over Tucci, whose 1996 movie Big Night inspired the young Stranger Things actor to pursue filmmaking. Then, there’s Tucci’s new memoir, Taste, a mix of recipes and autobiography, which has brought Keery to the idea of a cookbook-album concoction—as in maybe one day, somehow, creating a project that blends recipes and his music.
“Well, not a cookbook,” Keery says. “How can you blend genres? What he does there, in a really great way, is: How do you blend a cookbook and a story about your life? Nobody’s done that in the same way, not that I have read.” (As a devoted rom-com lover, I tell him to read Heartburn by Nora Ephron.)
Keery rattles off a long list of movies he’d like to make one day. A moving family affair like Big Night. An original adventure movie. Or even a sizzling thriller like Nightcrawler. I tell him to combine all three for something original—genre-blending like Taste—and he seems eager for the challenge.
Still, as exciting as this all is, and as hyped as I am about Keery’s passion to direct, we’re here to talk about his new album DECIDE—yes, the popular actor makes music, too—and Stranger Things.
What Joe Keery is Really Thinking When You Ask For A Selfie
What ‘Stranger Things’ Star Joe Keery Is Really Thinking When You Ask For A Selfie
BUSTLE – Joe Keery is me. Joe Keery is goooooaaaals. Joe Keery is the best mother to four pre-teen misfits this side of reality. If you’ve been on Tumblr in the last three months, you probably know Steve Harrington’s Stranger Things Season 2 arc has turned 25-year-old actor Joe Keery into a magnet for memeification. He’s become someone who can simply pose for a quick on-set snapchat photo with a dog and “champagne” and become synonymous with #goals or do his job well and end up with a Wikipedia page that indicates he’s a parent of four (people are just really into this Steve Harrington as surrogate mom to the Stranger Things kids, OK?). But in reality, Keery is just a dude who’s trying to figure out how to find time to create music between seasons of the Netflix smash, and who’s still puzzled as to why everyone is so obsessed with editing his face onto the cover of the Babysitter’s Club books.“It’s wild, it’s crazy, it’s so weird,” he says, speaking to me at Bustle HQ with such genuine disbelief that you’d almost think he’d been body-swapped into the life of a celebrity. “It’s become a lifestyle?” he asks, referring to the viral dog photo (it was originally screen-grabbed from co-star Finn Wolfhard’s Snapchat). “This is just me, this is like how I am. It’s like geez, I was just doing it for fun.” But as Keery tells it, he probably should have seen this new wave of fandom coming — after all, his mom actually liked his character this season.
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