Teddy Geiger Announces New Album ‘Teresa’ With Fuzzy First Single
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In 2019, Teddy Geiger relocated to Madrid where she lived with a cousin for a few months. She needed to get out of Los Angeles: In the wake of a Grammy nomination for co-writing Shawn Mendes’ “In My Blood” and experiencing her first full year of living publicly out as a woman, Geiger was feeling overwhelmed by the workload and personal history the city held.
“I needed some space to be away from people that had known me before the transition and just be in a new environment and see what that felt like to be meeting people for the first time,” she says over Zoom from her kitchen in L.A., where she eventually returned.
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One late night, while Geiger was roaming around Madrid, she met a girl who was confused that Geiger’s name was “Teddy,” instead opting to give the singer-songwriter the name “Teresa.” Geiger didn’t mind and grew kind of infatuated with the given name.
“I started writing it a lot on things. I really liked writing on windows or in the shower,” she recalls. “I kind of connected it to this more present, inner drive.”
The name “Teresa” has since come to represent the music Geiger wrote alone at her cousin’s kitchen table during those few months in Madrid. Those songs will be released as an album naturally titled Teresa, out later this year via STEM. For the first taste, Geiger has debuted first single “True Love,” a fuzzy, dreamy track full of honesty, yearning and hope. Geiger explains it’s about the art of looking at a relationship with another person and trusting yourself to step away.
Like much of the album, the relationship Geiger explores is not necessarily romantic but rather her own relationship with her music. At the time, she was on a rapid, demanding rise as a pop songwriter due to the success her work with Mendes yielded. During her time as a pop writer, following early years as a teen idol herself, she worked with big names like One Direction, Niall Horan, Christian Aguilera, the Chicks, Caroline Polachek, and many more. It became an uphill battle to keep up with the demand and challenged Geiger’s own shy nature.
“It’s a lot of opportunity to sort through and a lot of one-off days with new people,” she admits. “I can be shy and it takes time for me to get comfortable with people. A lot of these songs are me reconnecting with that inner creativity within me. It ended up being a big growth period for me personally.”
Teresa was just the beginning of Geiger’s growth. She completed the album in New York shortly after returning from Madrid but then sat on this music due to the pandemic. Like many people, she found herself having a fatalist view on the world due to the daily horrific news and ongoing fear. She spent some time exploring her own creativity in the interest of “just keeping a brain,” she explains. She started drawing and painting again, some of which will be featured in a physical booklet that will accompany Teresa.
Even with four years in between making and releasing her latest album, Geiger always knew she wanted this music to come out. She felt the momentum stirring, aided by numerous lifestyle changes that put her in an even healthier headspace than when she originally wrote this music. She quit drinking alcohol and coffee, only smokes weed to sleep and stopped smoking. Her worldview and perception of herself may have felt as fuzzy as the songs sound back then, but she’s feeling a lot clearer now.
“There’s another level of clarity that comes from not feeling like I need to do something or take something to put myself in a state. A lot of that came from having too much on my plate.”
Geiger is still constantly writing, making voice notes of new songs and little lyrics and ideas as they come to her. She’s even thinking about getting back on stage for what would be her first shows in a decade, something that scares but excites her.
“I’d like to actually start figuring out some people I could do that with,” she says. “It makes me nervous but I think it’d be fun.”
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