After making a splash last year, Wilmington pop singer shoots for the stars in 2024

Golden-voiced Wilmington singer Annie Tracy might not be a world-famous pop star just yet, but she certainly sounds the part.

Hanging out in downtown coffee shop Bespoke in early December, Tracy's look was casual yet glamorous as she sported stylish sweats, gold hoop earrings, a cross necklace and a diamond chip that glittered in one of her teeth, adding a little extra wattage to an already high-powered smile.

January often brings a sense of promise and possibilities, but for Tracy, 2024 really could be her year.

"I try my best to not have any expectations," Tracy said. "But it's going to probably be the busiest year of my life."

It comes on the heels of a 2023 that saw Tracy begin her music career in earnest, releasing a debut EP, "Act I," that showcased both her souful voice and an emotionally relatable songwriting style that explores the ups and downs of love and life.

On the strength of her "Act I" songs — soulful pop tunes like the lovey "Times It By Two" and the sultry, searching "Clothes Are So Obnoxious" — she scored a spot on Mary J. Blige's Strength of a Woman Festival in Atlanta, played the coveted Series Show at SoHo House New York and gained upwards of 80,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and over 100,000 followers on Instagram.

A couple of her videos went viral, and she collaborated on a track, "Close To You," with pop singer Robin Thicke, that appears on her second EP, "Act II," due out Feb. 9.

Tracy credits much of her success to "my team," which is led by the artist and producer Tricky Stewart, who's worked with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna, Pink, Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.

In 2024, she's trying to build on that success with "Act II" while organizing a small tour and continuing to write and record new songs.

"My number one request is live performances," Tracy said, and while she hasn't done a show of her songs in Wilmington yet, she's no stranger to local audiences.

Theater kid

Born in New Mexico as Annie Tracy Marsh, her family moved to Wilmington when she was 8. She was more into playing basketball as a kid than she was into the arts, she said, "But I've been singing my whole life."

"When I first heard gospel music, and soul music, like, my whole body shifted," Tracy said, citing Beyonce's song "Listen" from "Dreamgirls" as the one that changed things for her.

"I sang that song, literally, probably 20 times a day," she said, including as a teenager during an audition for Opera House Theatre Co.'s 2011 production of "Hairspray," in which she scored the supporting role of the spunky Penny Pingleton.

"That's the show that made me get into theater," Tracy said. "I really hadn't done a ton of theater before that."

Many Wilmington roles would follow, and she would eventually move to New York to pursue her dream, attending Pace Performing Arts for Musical Theater, which she calls "my dream school for musical theater. I wanted to be in New York so bad. But after being there and studying theater for two and a half years, I kind of got sad … I was like, 'You know, I really don't love this enough to slave away at this art.'"

It was a hard realization for her, she said, because up to then theater had been her everything.

Tracy shifted gears, transferring to the esteemed Berklee School of Music in Boston.

"I honestly didn't even want to be an artist. I just knew I wanted to be in the music industry," she said, and took classes in engineering and production. Then, in her songwriting classes, something clicked.

"I didn't really realize that I was good at songwriting, to be honest, until I started taking those songwriting classes at Berklee and I got a lot of support from my teachers," she said. "I don't know why I was fighting being an artist. I didn't think it was realistic. Like, you just listen to the radio, you see it on TV or on tour, and just like, how do you even get there? It seems impossible."

Even when she was in New York, she'd perform her songs during open mic at clubs like The Bitter End, "But I wouldn't tell anybody about it," she said.

Then someone sent a video of her performing an original song at Berklee to Tricky Stewart, and her whole world changed.

"Basically, a week later, I found my team that I currently have," she said.

Things didn't happen all at once. She worked with Stewart on her songs for about a year before she ever began recording them, then didn't release any until last year.

She's had meetings with labels, but even given the risks and knowing she had no real following, online or elsewhere, she chose to release her music independently and try to grow her audience organically.

"It could be like, nobody could listen," she said. "Of course I had that fear."

Thankfully, those fears proved to be unfounded. She's got a small but growing fan base and her numbers are good for an indie artist, strong enough to keep her in the game pursuing the dream of a singing career.

Completing the journey

The fact that Tracy is doing what she's doing at all is something of an anomaly in that "nobody else in my family is musical," she said. No one, that is, but her mother's sister. Her aunt, whose name was Tracy, was just 24 when she died of cancer.

"She was an actress, singer, all that stuff," Tracy said. "Mom never pushed music on me. The opposite of a stage mom ... But when she saw that I was singing, she was like, 'OK, this is basically Tracy reincarnated.' I kind of feel like I'm almost going on her journey or finishing her journey."

That journey continues in 2024, and a lot of things are on the table.

"I can't be broke any longer," Tracy said with a laugh.

She's open to touring as an opening act for bigger names, or to writing for other artists.

"I need to move on to write fresh stuff," she said.

As for her songs on "Act II," which drops Feb. 9, they are "more of a deeper ask" than her first batch, she said.

There's the string-driven banger "Hometown," inspired by mixed emotions upon returning to Wilmington and running into "a boy I used to know/ Turns out it was all for show/ Didn't realize it till after/ Should've known, he was an actor."

Lines like that make her see her songwriting persona as "the vulnerable savage," she said, emotional and real but "just savage enough, just sassy enough."

Like when she sings directly, and passionately, to the new girlfriend of an ex on the soaring single "Music Taste," declaring, "He doesn't have/ Good music taste/ Those are my favorite songs he plays you/ He's fake."

Then there's "We Used to Talk (Bye Theatre)," which has a cabaret vibe and imagines her days on the stage as a fondly remembered old love.

"We used to talk but we fell off," she sings, and when she hits the line "you made me who I am today," you can tell she's not kidding.

"Theater prepared me for this," Tracy said, meaning that in a way she's playing a pop star version of herself. "Like, the lines in your arms that I learned in ballet class. How to pick up a microphone stand. Other artists have to get movement training, acting training. It's second nature to me."

Even better, now she can sing her songs her way, and not stress "about pleasing some director."

As she moves a new batch of songs into the world, Tracy wants her hometown to know that she's "very grateful for Wilmington support. I've had people come to me and just be like, 'Keep going. We're so proud of you.' And it's just so incredibly kind, and it means more to me than anything. Because I grew up here."

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Pop singer Annie Tracy's new EP 'Act II' partly inspired by Wilmington