* father – German, English, Scottish, French-Canadian Place of Birth: Rochester, New York, U.S. Geiger stopped what she was doing, turned around and “looked at me with an overwhelming amount of happiness and joy beaming out of her eyes,” he said.Geiger in 2019, photo by kathclick/ Mendes said he would never forget when he “unconsciously referred to Teddy as ‘she’ for the first time in the flow of conversation.” Ms. Geiger addressed her newly public reality with her collaborators, the adjustment period, she said, was all but nonexistent.
There was this electricity running through her.”Īnd while weeks went by before Ms. “It was the first time I ever saw her sober,” Mr. Mendes in Malibu to begin work on his album the day after she returned. Geiger said, “I threw away all my boys clothes and started wearing makeup.” She said she hasn’t smoked anything since, diverting the money saved to beauty supplies and studio gear, and filling recording breaks by firing pellet guns at bottles from her back porch. Geiger pointed to increased transgender visibility in popular culture, including the models Hari Nef and Teddy Quinlivan, as crucial to her journey, and said she hoped her own coming out (and its typically lighthearted documentation on Instagram) might do the same for others.Īs soon as she was back from treatment, Ms. I’d never met a trans person before.” It wasn’t until her 20s that she even really knew they existed. “But growing up in Rochester, there were limited resources. “I can remember back to being 5 and looking in the mirror, feeling like a girl and wanting that,” she said. Geiger entered a monthlong treatment program to address her anxiety and, as she put it, “get to the bottom of the gender thing.” Parsing the sources of her shame and anger in marathon group-therapy sessions, she emerged ready to confront her truth with friends and family, all of whom she said have been supportive. “It was the only femininity that I was expressing, so I wanted it to be so perfect,” she said. Geiger said, she was smoking up to two packs and a half-ounce of weed a day she had also developed obsessive-compulsive tendencies that manifested as ruminating thoughts and a fixation on keeping her nails - which she’d begun painting on the advice of an ex-girlfriend - pristine. Geiger was plagued by intense anxiety, exacerbated by a dependence on cigarettes and marijuana. “I get more excited the day of creation than once it’s big.”īut even as her songwriting began to find new audiences via other artists, and she moved from New York back to California to pursue the industry from another angle, Ms.
“Having a hit is fine, but doing the work is what I want,” she said. Geiger honed her writing and production, churning out songs in every style, from ’80s pop-rock to scuffed-up punk to experimental psychedelia.
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The years that followed were full of exploration and self-discovery - including a particularly poignant acid trip - as Ms. “It was a serious, serious connection - deeper than a songwriter - and from then on, I decided she has to be a part of everything I do.”īefore turning 21, she had returned home to Rochester, unsigned and uninterested in the constantly cranking machine. “I met someone who really acts like me in the studio, who really sings like me, who gets excited like me,” Mr. Mendes’s next album, “Illuminate,” the pair wrote together directly (including “Treat You Better,” 1.5 billion views), cementing a kinship that went beyond music. 4 on the charts and now has more than one billion views on YouTube.įor Mr. “She was the person I was trying to sing like.” His version reached No. “She’s mesmerizing and just has a star quality to her,” Mr.
Mendes aimed to cross over into the mainstream and found his first defining smash in a demo of “Stitches” sung by Ms. A budding star on the social network Vine, Mr. Geiger, whose early career mirrored his own. Mendes, among the only current pop stars to convincingly wield a guitar, was a natural ally for Ms. people to know that a trans woman has co-written and produced some of the biggest hits of the last couple years is beyond inspiring and beyond important.” “To see that this trans person is an instrumental queen - one of the most technically talented people in the pop world - is a really amazing thing not just for our industry but for the world,” Mr.
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