Stacie Orrico

Stacie Joy Orrico (born March 3, 1986) is an American CCM and pop singer, songwriter, and occasional actress. She was discovered at a Christian talent contest when she was in her early teens and has since released two successful albums, with a third album coming out in August 2006 worldwide and January 16, 2007 in the United States.

Biography

Early life

Stacie Orrico was born in Seattle, Washington to Christian Italian-American parents. Both parents, Dean and Patti, had a desire to travel and took the family overseas for missions work, expanding their horizons and worldviews. Her multi–talented father often got opportunities to change jobs and even industries, so the family moved often on top of their missions travel. Because of her family's constant moving, she has lived in Ukraine, Hawaii, Denver, Colorado and Franklin, Tennessee, and back to Seattle (where her family lives). Orrico is one of five children: older brother, Jesse, older sister, Rachel, and twins siblings, Joshua and Alicia.
From an early age, Orrico has been influenced by a range of musical styles. Grown up singing hymns with her family as well as participating in choirs gave her a more classical history. However, her personal tastes often bent towards R&B and soul. Some of her influences include Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, and Lauryn Hill. Having learned piano from an early age, she wrote her first song at age 6 called "Always Answer".

Music career

Stacie Orrico got her start in 1998 at the age of 12 by attending a Christian music festival, Praise in the Rockies, held in her then-home state of Colorado. Orrico inadvertently entered a high-stakes talent competition, and won. A ForeFront Records executive was on hand and approached her for a record deal (she eventually did sign with them).
Since then, she has released two albums. The first was Genuine (see 2000 in music), created at the young age of fourteen. It sold over 13,000 copies in the first week, the highest debut week sales ever for a female Christian artist.The album produced the hit single "Don't Look At Me" which topped Christian charts for ten consecutive weeks. The album had two #1 hits as well as three more Top Ten singles. Genuine eventually sold 500,000 copies, giving the album Gold certification on just word-on-mouth alone.
Her next effort, the more mainstream and self-titled Stacie Orrico, was released in 2003 (see 2003 in music) and charted in the U.S. Billboard Top 200 (debuting at #67), Australian ARIAnet and the United Kingdom albums charts. The first maintream single from this album was "Stuck", which became a worldwide hit making it into the Top 5 or Top 10 of the majority of the world's charts. This was followed by the single "(There's Gotta Be) More To Life", which also charted and went top 20 in Australia and the UK. "More To Life" failed to do as well as "Stuck" but still became a hit in many countries. This was then followed by "I Promise" (top 30 in the UK), and the final mainstream single "I Could Be The One" (top 40 in the UK on June 2004). Both singles were given limited releases and limited promotion, so it is understandable that they didn't fare as well as the first two singles did. The last three singles were only released to Christian radio in addition to "Strong Enough", which reached #1 as the CD's very first single. Stacie Orrico sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S., also good for Gold certification. The album also sold 600,000 in Japan and an estimated 3.4 million copies worldwide.
As of July 2006, her new album Beautiful Awakening was set to be released on August 29, 2006 (6 years after the release of Genuine), but because of concerns with competition from Jessica Simpson's new album being released the same day and various other chart toppers such as Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, JoJo, Christina Aguilera, Aly and AJ, Paris Hilton, Evanescence, and Hilary Duff (who's album has also been delayed till February 2007, due to Hilary filming a new movie War Inc.) all their albums almost released around the same time, it has been pushed back until January 16th 2007. On the 31st of July Beautiful Awakening was leaked onto the internet. Beautiful Awakening will still be released in Japan and a few other countries. The album features production from producers like Dallas Austin, Dwayne Bastiany, KayGee and The Underdogs and writing duties are performed by notable songwriters like Shekspear, Track & Field, Anthony Dent, newcomer Novel and Orrico herself. The first single, "I'm Not Missing You", originally went for radio adds on June 20th,but due to little promotion decided to re-release the single to radio in October. The song had gone as high as #19 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles. The second single from the album is "So Simple", due for release in October 2006.
Her music is generally looked at as an influential part of the now highly profitable contemporary christian music industry, along with bands such as P.O.D.

Personal life

As of 2006, Stacie Orrico is currently residing with her family in Seattle, Washington. She spent the past year relaxing in Malibu, a part of Los Angeles, California with friends, including Christian singer Rachael Lampa.