Geiger was under heavy scrutiny at the time, with expectations set high for her image. The experience of being a product and having an image was a lot, and the image didn’t necessary correspond with me even beyond a gender. “I had to leave all of my friends that I was going to high school with, and I was constantly in motion, having a very different experience than my peers. “I was so busy, and at that time, there was so much to process that …it was there, but it wasn’t,” she explains. But a lack of trans figures to look up to, she says, left her with little language or experience to identify with as a teen or even young adult. She recalls always having some understanding that the gender she identified with didn’t match the one the world saw. Geiger was assigned male at birth, and publicly identified that way until she began transitioning last fall. By the end of that process I was pretty burnt out.”Īt the same time, the constant work schedule gave Geiger an obsession to zero in on - something to distract her from the feelings of gender dysmorphia she’d felt for most of her life. It was intense, and it was a lot of promotion and playing the same songs over and over again. The worst part? “ I was on the road for two and a half years. It was cool to see what he did, and being there for the recording process was amazing.” “He basically brought me into the industry and was a mentor. As positive a learning experience working with Mann was, she hasn’t gone back to listen to those early songs in a long time. “The best part about it was making a record with Billy Mann,” Geiger gushes of the writer and producer who has worked with P!nk, Celine Dion and Robyn. Her debut album, Underage Thinking, was released in 2006 and peaked at Number 8 on the Hot 100.
Though she didn’t get the role, she did land a record deal and a spot opening up for Hilary Duff on tour. In 2004, at 15, she auditioned for the VH1 reality series In Search of the Partridge Family, where Geiger competed to play Keith in a revival of the Seventies series ( future costar Emma Stone won the role of Laurie). Listening attentively to the local alternative rock station, she branched out to Offspring, Weezer, No Doubt, Blind Melon and Ben Folds Five. Like many preteens in the early millennium, Geiger’s tastes leaned towards melancholy late Nineties stars like Fiona Apple and Elliott Smith. The first song she wrote was called “Stuck” not long after, once she’d mastered ProTools at 14, she made her first recording ever, titled “Amazingly Fat Cows.” ( “I think you can buy that on iTunes, actually,” she adds. I think the way things worked out was really cool in a way.”Īs a kid in Rochester, New York, Geiger learned how to both play and write on guitar and piano.
“If I had been out on the road the whole time and stuff, I might not have had as much time. With that space to breathe, she found herself free to experiment more with her sound, getting back into the noisier, messier music she loved when she first started writing music. “The artist thing fizzled out and gave me space to spend a lot more time growing as a writer/producer, and then when I finally got the opportunity to write and produce, I had spent so much time working on that that I was ready for that,” Geiger says. One Direction, Shawn Mendes Writer Teddy Geiger Announces Transition My influences were changing, and I wanted to experiment.” “ I was more excited about what, like, Kanye was doing or whatever. “I didn’t connect to what was happening on radio with singer-songwriter stuff at the time,” says Geiger, who is now 30. Besides, the singer-songwriter schtick started to feel boring. Shifts in both radio pop and her label meant that it was easy for her to bail on her Columbia deal and explore other options. “It was pretty natural,” Geiger says over the phone in early autumn. After an early retirement at 21, she took a few steps back out of the spotlight and began writing songs for and with other artists, most famously becoming one of the names behind Shawn Mendes’ biggest hits (“Stitches,” “Treat You Better”). At 19, she starred as the romantic lead opposite future Oscar winner Emma Stone in the comedy The Rocker.
She was a teen idol by 16, with a mushy soft-rock hit, “ For You I Will (Confidence),” on her hands. Not many artists get to experience as many pop lives as Teddy Geiger.
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