Who is Djo, the indie musician who dethroned Taylor Swift with two billion streams?

If someone had told me just a few years ago that I’d be crying over the end of Stranger Things while simultaneously refreshing the Spotify charts like it was election night, I wouldn’t have believed them. And yet, here we are.

While I was still emotionally recovering from the final episode, something unexpected happened. Joe Keery, the original Stranger Things babysitter and a fan favourite who wasn’t even meant to survive past season two (until the Duffer brothers, along with the audience, fell in love with him), climbed to the very top of the global Spotify chart. And not just ahead of anyone, but ahead of Taylor Swift. Yes, that Taylor Swift, hair, guitar and fringe included.

Originally released in 2022 on the album Decide, “End of Beginning” is now enjoying a spectacular second life. The track has already amassed nearly two billion streams and has claimed the top spot for the second time, following its first major breakthrough in 2024, driven by viral success on TikTok.

This new wave of popularity coincided directly with the release of the final episode of Stranger Things. The song’s melancholic theme about the end of one chapter, new beginnings and the transition into adulthood resonated deeply with fellow fans. Social media quickly filled with video edits, theories and alternative endings set to the track, along with a collective agreement that “End of Beginning” had become the unofficial anthem of the series finale. Some even went as far as imagining a surprise extra episode. And the hype exploded. In short, the song is emotional chaos for every Stranger Things fan, neatly packed into three and a half minutes of perfect indie existentialism.

And then there is the fact that Joe wrote the song years ago, at the end of his studies in Chicago, just before he became Steve Harrington and long before Stranger Things turned into a global emotional institution. It adds an extra layer of fate to the story, one that even Netflix screenwriters would not turn down. I am especially amused by the fact that Joe and Taylor Swift record in the same studio. She reportedly said she loved his song. A few months later, he knocked her off the top spot. And just like that, we went from “oh, he’s the handsome guy with the baseball bat” to global number one on Spotify.

A musician who became an actor, whose body of work has turned into the soundtrack of a generational feeling that something beautiful has ended and that we now have to move on. Even when we really do not want to. If this is the end of one chapter for Hawkins, then it is clearly the beginning of an entirely new one for Djo, Joe Keery’s stage name, who also released a new album in 2025 that has been met with nothing but positive reviews so far. And me? I will be replaying the song for a while, staring dramatically out of the window and pretending I am not emotionally attached to a fictional town in Indiana and the character with the best development arc on Netflix.

Joe Keery’s Music Career

Djo’s music career, led by actor Joe Keery, is a successful indie project known for its psychedelic pop sound and synth-heavy production. It represents a creative path separate from his acting career and includes the albums Twenty Twenty (2019) and Decide (2022), with the latter’s track “End of Beginning” becoming a global viral hit in late 2024 and early 2025.

Keery began as a member of the band Post Animal and started releasing music under the name Djo in order to maintain artistic distance from his acting identity. In his songs, he explores personal themes while building a distinctive, unconventional sound. In 2025, he also released a new album, Crux, which you can listen to below.