Teddi Mellencamp has one of the most iconic last names in music, so it’s no surprise that she turned to her famous father, John Mellencamp, for advice before taking on The Masked Singer.
“My dad said, ‘Just sing loud and proud, and if you don’t hit a note, you don’t hit a note, but as long as you’re giving it your all, that’s what matters,’” the former Bravo star, 44, exclusively told Us Weekly after her unmasking during the Wednesday, February 4, episode of the Fox singing competition. “And so that’s what I was doing.”
Teddi didn’t initially tell John, 74, that she’d landed a gig on The Masked Singer, but when it came time to show off her pipes, she decided it was time to ask the Grammy winner for some tips.
“Once I was singing a song, then I talked to him about it. I needed advice,” she. “He’s like, ‘Don’t go out there trying to think that you’re a singer. Just go out there and sing the song the way you would if you were singing along. Have fun.’”
The advice seems to have worked, because Teddi blew the judges away with her performances of Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” and her dad’s “Jack & Diane.” The former song, she explained, has become “an anthem” for her as she battles stage IV melanoma. (A scan in October 2025 showed “no detectable cancer,” but Teddi explained on her podcast last month that she’s still considered stage IV while she remains on immunotherapy.)
“I’m probably even going to get emotional talking about it,” Teddi said of Platten’s inspiring track. “I’m almost a year [after] having all my cancer surgeries, but it’s been a fight, and I wanted to be able to share the softer side, but also [show] you can work really hard and do the things that you want to do still.”
As for the second song, John’s 1982 No. 1 hit, Teddi initially didn’t think it was an option to even sing one of her dad’s songs because of who owned the rights. When she realized his masters had been sold, however, his catalog was on the table, and she was willing to give it a shot.
Teddi Mellencamp performs as Calla Lily on season 14 of ‘The Masked Singer.’ Michael Becker/ FOX
When Teddi spoke to Us, her dad hadn’t yet seen her take on “Jack & Diane” — he was planning to come over and watch with her so she could get “nice and embarrassed” — but he previously expressed his approval for her “Fight Song” performance.
“He thought the first episode was great,” she told Us. “I mean, he’s my dad, so it’s different. But he was like, ‘I thought you were great.’”
Tuning into The Masked Singer is apparently always a family affair in the Mellencamp household, no matter who’s under the costume. As Teddi said in Calla Lily’s first clue package, she wanted to do the show for her kids, who love the show. (She shares Slate, 13, Cruz, 11, and Dove, 5, with ex Edwin Arroyave.)
“My kids have seen me in a situation where I was recovering from brain surgery, and I wanted them to know that there’s life after that,” she explained. “And once you’re feeling better, you can push yourself and you can try new things. So, that was part of the reason that I wanted to do The Masked Singer, but the other part was because it’s my kids’ favorite show.”
The kids didn’t know in advance that their mom was on the show, but she said they figured it out as soon as they heard her voice because she always sings in the car.
“I was like, ‘How do you know?’ Because I wanted to wait [to tell them],” she recalled. “And they were like, ‘Don’t even try to fool us. We know.’”
They were then “so worried” that their mom would go home first, but that didn’t happen: She notched two performances before Calla Lily’s run came to an end despite being so nervous that she found herself shaking on stage.
“I just was like, ‘You’ve got to do this. There’s no choice,’” Teddi recalled telling herself. “You’ve just got to fight through the nerves and remember the words and sing loud.”
Teddi has been fighting hard for the past year, sharing raw insights about her health journey on her “Two T’s in a Pod” podcast, which she cohosts with The Real Housewives of Orange County’s Tamra Judge. Listeners may come expecting reality TV gossip, but Teddi hasn’t shied away from discussing the serious topic of her treatment, in part because she thinks it would be “impossible” for fans not to notice something was going on.
“You can hear the way that my voice has changed throughout the time. You can see my personality change. And I’m aware of it,” Teddi explained. “When you have brain surgery, there’s so many things affected, and I didn’t want to feel ashamed by it. So, I just wanted to talk about it and make other people not feel alone. But also, if I talk about it, then I’m less nervous about it, then I can just go along being me. I’m not trying to hide something like, ‘Hey, guys, I’m really shaky today,’ or, ‘You might notice my voice sounds funny.’”
She added, “It’s one of the side effects of one of the treatments I’m going through, and just kind of letting people know that you’re not alone. I think so many people talk about the physical aspect of having cancer, but the mental aspect has kind of been forgotten. So, as much as I can talk about that, I do.”
Just last month, Teddi opened up about starting therapy to help process all that she’s been through between her cancer battle and her divorce from Arroyave, 48.
“It’s really hard for me to tap into my feelings, because I think I’ve put up a wall,” she shared with Us. “I was so scared of what happened that I didn’t want to really dig into it and get into those emotions, but now that I have, it’s like the floodgates are open. It’s definitely been helping, because I think that when you go through a trauma and you’re just trying to white-knuckle it the whole time, it’s gonna come around. And when it came around, I was completely shocked.”
The Masked Singer, she said, helped remind her that she can keep going.
“You become such a creature of habit when you’re healing,” she said. “I’m home. I do my podcast from the house. I’m not allowed to drive yet, so my podcast room is 15 steps from where my bedroom is. It’s like everything is in one area. Being able to get out there and do that was something that showed me I can do hard things.”
The Masked Singer airs on Fox Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Hulu.
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