Singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger has a lot of big accomplishments to be proud of, from signing her first record deal as a teenager and scoring a Top 10 album with 2006’s Underage Thinking to penning songs for others and also releasing her third album, 2018’s LilyAnna. Yet, in our signature video franchise “The First Time,” Geiger recalls how she’s impacted others rather humbly and other sweet memories that led to her success.
Geiger, who first performed at age 13 in a coffee house and first wrote a song when she was five or six, says the first time she could remember being inspired by another woman was Gwen Stefani. “I got No Doubt on cassette, Tragic Kingdom. And I just remember being so psyched about all those songs and like the songwriting and just her voice and her vibe was amazing.”
She in turn has inspired others with her song “These Walls.”
“A lot of people wrote to me about it and said it helped them with various things, which was like really nice to hear and felt good,” she explains. “And I had one person write me a whole thing about how it helped them come out and just a bunch of different things, like, ‘It helped me ask this girl I wanted to ask out’ or whatever. It’s like, that’s cool, that music can do even just little things.”
Despite making such big impacts on fans, she says when she heard her songs on the radio for the first time it was “surreal.” And as far as recounting her successes, it’s the small things that remain moving.
“Little things I remember like tying my shoes for the first time and like being psyched,” she explains. “Or like going up to my mom and being like, ‘I wrote the word apple’ and like I spelled it wrong, but she was like, ‘That’s at least the right sounds,’ and I was like, ‘Sick.’ Like that stuff’s awesome. Just little success vibes. And now I can read!”