RVC performer is climbing the charts

Rockville Centre resident Anna LePetri has been steadily climbing the indie music charts. Now, she’s looking to make her big break.

LePetri, 18, who goes by the stage name Annabelle, started performing when she was a freshman at South Side High School. Lately, she’s released songs she has recorded onto YouTube, and has been getting more plays on radio stations. Her song “Every Way You Move” topped out at No. 3 on indie music charts.

“I followed the typical RVC kid route by playing sports and doing all that, and I just fell into [performing],” LePetri said. “I always idolized Disney Channel pop stars, and said, ‘I would love to do that.’ It was always something I wanted to do, but didn’t think I could because it’s out of the norm here. When I grew up and saw more of the world, I realized it was a thing I could do. I didn’t have to keep doing all the things everyone else did.”

She started to follow that dream, and began taking lessons from a voice coach. Then she started to find places where she could perform, and participated in lots of local singing competitions.

Since graduating high school, LePetri has turned her music career into a full-time job. She writes and records her own music, which falls into the pop genre. She also works on networking and promoting herself.

“I do as much songwriting as possible and trying to create interesting, new music,” she said. “I’m sort of working on both sides of the spectrum, which can get dizzying sometimes.”

Her parents help her out (she calls her mother, Barbara, her “mom-ager”), but she still does a lot of the work on her own. She also works with a radio promoter, whom she met through a friend, to boost her visibility at radio stations.

Her stage name came from her father, Rich. LePetri said she was worried about people mispronouncing her last name and was trying to come up with something simpler and catchy. Randomly, her father called her Annabelle — a nickname that he used to use when she was growing up — and it stuck.

While she’s writing and producing music, LePetri said she’s also trying to get picked up by a label to break into more mainstream music.

“It’s something that’s fun and challenging at the same time: what can I do to garner attention of people,” LePetri said. “It’s an interesting journey. It’s fun. I can’t complain about it.”

Her dream, she said, is to go on tour for long periods of time and play to large crowds. LePetri said that she was awed by the reaction the performer received at a recent concert she attended at MetLife Stadium, and would love to do that some day.

“I love songwriting and recording,” she said. “But my favorite part of being an entertainer is to entertain a crowd. So my goal is to be on a successful, stable tour for long periods of time.”

You can listen to LePetri’s music at https://soundcloud.com/annabellepop.