Early life
Stacie Orrico was born in Seattle, Washington to Italian-American parents. Both parents, Dean and Patti, had a desire to travel and took the family overseas for mission work, expanding their horizons and world views. Her multi-talented father often got opportunities to change jobs and even industries. Because of this, the family moved often. The family's constant moving has brought them to Ukraine, Hawaii, Denver, Colorado and Franklin, Tennessee, and back to Seattle, where they now reside. Orrico is one of five children: older brother, Jesse, older sister, Rachel, and twins, Joshua and Alicia.
From an early age, Orrico has been influenced by a range of musical styles. Growing up singing hymns with her family, as well as participating in choirs, gave her a more classical history. However, her personal tastes are 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."
Stacie now lives in Washington with her sister Rachel. They have enjoyed decorating their place in Moroccan and Indian themes but keep it diverse so Stacie can display interesting items from her travels around the world. Fans often bring her "house warming items" to help her celebrate owning her first home.
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-of-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, and predictably they did not fare as well as the first two singles. 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.
Her new album Beautiful Awakening was set to be released worldwide on August 29, 2006, but because of concerns of competition with new albums from Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, and other chart toppers, it was delayed in the U.S. until March 2007. Though a few songs from the new album leaked onto the internet, Beautiful Awakening was still released in Japan, the UK, and other countries. The album features production from Dallas Austin, Dwayne Bastiany, KayGee and The Underdogs and writing duties are performed by notable songwriters like She'kspere, Track & Field, Anthony Dent, newcomer Novel and Orrico herself.
The first single "I'm Not Missing You" went for radio adds on June 20, 2006, but due to little promotion was re-released in October. The song peaked at #19 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. The second single from the album, "So Simple," was released in Asia in October 2006 and will be released in Europe on January 27, 2007.
Her music is looked at as an influential part of the now highly profitable Contemporary Christian Music industry, along with bands such as P.O.D.
On December, 9 2006, Stacie performed "live" in The Whyville.net "Greek Theater"
Recently she co-wrote a song for Eva Avila's debut album, the song is titled "Not So Different".
At the beginning of 2007, American and Canadian fans eagerly anticipated the belated release of Stacie's third studio album "Beautiful Awakening"... which was then later prosponed again with a problem at Vigin Records. In March 2007, Stacie announced to fans that Virgin Records was merging with Capitol Records and she had left them and would not be releasing the album with that label... but she promised it would be released eventually.
Personal life
After the release of "Stacie Orrico" and the singles from that album, Stacie decided she did not want to pursue her career in music any further. She and her friends went to stay in Malibu in California, where Stacie started work in a small cafe. Throughout her break, however, Stacie continued writing music which then, eventually, led her back to her career. She started recording again and developed a new album "Beautiful Awakening".
In February 2007, Stacie Orrico left Virgin Records due to the label merging with Capitol Records and her album never being released in the US. This gave her a lot of free time in which she has now started raising money to move to Africa to help children with AIDS.
