Stacie Orrico
- Joel Caballero
- Oct 5
- 5 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Stacie Joy Orrico (born March 3, 1986) is an American singer and songwriter, got her start in contemporary Christian music and then going mainstream pop and R&B. After signing to ForeFront Records, Orrico recorded her first album, Genuine (2000). Her second studio album Stacie Orrico (2003), released by ForeFront and Virgin, debuted at No. 59 on the Billboard 200, and was certified gold with over 500,000 sales in the United States. The first single "Stuck" reached No. 52 on Billboard Hot 100, and achieved greater success worldwide. Her second single "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life" peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Her self-titled album has achieved sales worldwide of over 3.5 million. In 2003, she made her first television appearance as an actress in two episodes of American Dreams. Her third album, Beautiful Awakening (2006) spawned two singles, "I'm Not Missing You" and "So Simple."
Orrico was born in Seattle, Washington, to Patti (née Schmautz) and Dean Orrico,
She is of one-quarter Italian descent, born to a close-knit family. The family later moved to Denver, Colorado, where Orrico took piano lessons from Cathy Paquette. Orrico is the middle child of five: her siblings are Jesse, Rachel, Alicia, and Joshua. She was a missionary with her family and lived in Ukraine for several years. Orrico grew up influenced by a wide range of musical styles and was a member in the church choir; she often accompanied on the piano as the family sang Christian hymns. At age six, Orrico wrote her first song, entitled "Always Answer."
Orrico got her start 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 later signed with them. Orrico released her debut album Genuine at the age of 14. It sold 13,000 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 CHR chart for seven consecutive weeks. The album also contained another number one hit with the title song and a couple of more Top 10 hits on the Christian radio charts either in CHR (contemporary hit radio) or AC (adult contemporary). By March 2001, Genuine sold more than 200,000 units in its first six months of release. Later in 2001, Orrico toured with Destiny's Child as the opening act on select dates of their Survivor Tour in the United States. In the fall of 2001, she released her six-track Christmas EP Christmas Wish.
In 2002, Orrico was working on her follow-up to Genuine on the ForeFront label. An unreleased second album titled Say It Again was scheduled for release for April of that year, but was postponed. The first single "Bounce Back" was released to Christian radio and peaked at number 7 on the Radio & Records (R&R) Christian CHR chart. However, when Virgin Records saw mainstream potential with Orrico, the album was postponed and then cancelled while it was retooled.
Four tracks from Say It Again were removed, although two were later released as single B-sides and Japanese bonus tracks on the album, including "Truth," "Until I Find You," "That's the Way" (a Billy Preston cover of "That's the Way God Planned It") and " Star of My Story." Meanwhile, "Bounce Back" was completely re-recorded and "Security" and "Maybe I Won't Look Back" received major alterations. The songs "Stuck," "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life," "I Promise," "I Could Be the One," "Instead", and "Strong Enough" were added to the track listing and in 2003, Orrico's self-titled release, Stacie Orrico, was the final result.
The first single, "Stuck," was sent to mainstream pop radio and later added to MTV. It performed well internationally, where it was a Top 10 hit in many European and Asian markets, but in the U.S., it under performed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart where it climbed to number 52, although it did well in the Mainstream Top 40 making the Top 10. The second single, "(There's Gotta Be) More to Life," where on the Hot 100 it performed a little bit better climbing up to number 30, was a Top 10 hit on the Christian charts and it was a Top 40 international hit. Stacie Orrico went Gold in the U.S. selling half and million copies and it was certified Double Platinum in Japan, where she has a strong fan base. In 2004, Orrico won three Dove Awards including Female Vocalist of the Year and earned her first, and only, Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album.
Overwhelmed by the global success, the singer soon found herself on the hectic music business treadmill and, instead of continue recording, opted to return to her family in Seattle and took a waitressing job at a neighborhood seafood restaurant. During her hiatus, Orrico began writing new material and wound up with 55 new songs. Orrico worked on her next album, Beautiful Awakening, and it was released internationally in August of 2006 on Virgin Records, but the release in the U.S. was cancelled due to Virgin merging with Capitol Records. Bad timing prevented the album to be released in America. Beautiful Awakening did well in Japan where it went Top 10 on the Japanese Album chart and went Gold there, but not as well in other European territories as her 2003 self-titled release.
In 2007, Orrico announced that Virgin Records was merging with Capitol Records and she had left them and would not be releasing the album with that label. Her record company terminated her contract and her tour dates were canceled. On her Myspace it was announced that she would spend time in Africa. So EMI Music released More to Life: The Best of Stacie Orrico in November 2007. Orrico was not involved with this compilation album.
Orrico took a long hiatus but in 2008, she was touring the Asian market in Japan, Singapore and Cambodia. Orrico was working on a fourth album around 2010 but nothing came out of it. She did release a non-album track "Catch Me If You Can" in 2012. The track led up to a new EP titled Reawakened two years later in 2014. It was Orrico's first new music in nearly eight years. After several years of dating, Orrico married actor Isaiah Johnson in July 2016. As of 2022, Orrico and Johnson have a son and a daughter. Recently, Orrico was one of the founders of The Nile Project, where according to its website, it's described as "a modern day artist’s salon, a place where creatives gather and encourage one another in their work. We are a community who believes that our greatest creative offerings to the world come out of a deeply intuitive, feminine source. Often this source is blocked or dried up from our pain and trauma. Rather than hiding our pain, we are community who excavates it, there we discover the untapped river of creativity."
More information on Stacie Orrico at Wikipedia:
Discography
Beautiful Awakening (2006)
More to Life: The Best of Stacie Orrico (2007) (compilation album)
Reawakened (EP) (2014)
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