Keery and Adam Thein entirely wrote and produced the album during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and recorded it at The Sound Factory in Los Angeles in late 2021.

In 2024, the track "End of Beginning" saw virality on social media and entered the US Billboard Hot 100 while it was released as the fifth single from the album.

The American actor and musician Joe Keery started releasing music under the alias Djo in 2019, when he left the band Post Animal after three projects between 2015 and 2018.

[3] In an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Keery stated that the decision of performing under the name Djo was made after he had the idea to not be "directly connected" to him.

[4] In an interview with NME, he said that it started to separate his musical career from Steve Harrington, his character in the series Stranger Things, but he then liked "the camaraderie that it creates".

[9][10] Decide is a synth-pop,[11] synthwave,[12] and alt-pop album,[13] with perceived elements of 1970s new wave,[14] funk, and 1980s pop music.

[15] Lyrically, Decide centers on Keery's reflections on relationships, technology, and self-growth,[1] as well as his anxiety about changes and identity.

[10] The musician David Byrne was one of the biggest influences for the album,[17] while Keery also cited the duos Daft Punk and Justice, the singers Charli XCX and Julian Casablancas, and the band the Strokes.

[16] The DIY critic Neive McCarthy opined that the album contains an energy based on synthesizers, with self-analytical but optimistic lyrics.

[23] It drew comparisons to the works of Tame Imapala,[9] with Stereogum's Chris Deville describing it as a "poppier" The Slow Rush (2020).

[7] The only interlude on the album, titled "Is That All It Takes", precedes "Go for It, which contains synthesizers reminiscent to those from "Hell of a Life" by Kanye West, according to Glicksman.

[6] The track starts with a bass and a staccato melody and turns into a pop ballad, centering on a love that fades quickly.

[12] The twelfth track, "Figure You Out", describes a disconnect from reality through questions: "Is the memory really mine?/Is the story I told just fake?/How can you get to know yourself?".

[19][20] Keery shared a series of videos on his Instagram account with a hotline number, through which he revealed snippets of the songs.

[43] On Metacritic, Decide received a weighted mean score of 77 out of 100 based on six critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reception.

[18][12] Lauren McDermott of Clash wrote that it has "an even wider range" than the sound, and that the combination of hooks, lyrics, and high-energy instrumental is unexpected.

Writing for Under the Radar, Mariel Fechik believed that Keery's talent "expand[s] outward", and said that the album is more confident and decisive than his previous effort.

[22] The former finalized the review by writing that "the record is thrillingly artistic while maintaining an alluring accessibility that makes it hard to stop listening".