NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — She was dubbed a “rock princess,” but Lisa Marie Presley staked her own musical claim as a singer-songwriter, allowing her to express herself apart from — but sometimes alongside — her megastar father.
Presley, who died Thursday at 54, bore a heavy weight: The daughter of musical royalty, the face of the Elvis estate and fodder for tabloid gossip about her marriages.
There was no question music would be a center point of her life, starting when she was a child singing for her father, the King with the unmistakable voice.
“He’s always been a huge influence on me my whole life always. It’s the first thing I ever heard,” she told The Associated Press in 2012.
As the sole heir of Elvis’ estate, her early life was defined by the Elvis brand and her role building that legacy with her mother Priscilla. That often meant Elvis fans put their own feelings about her father and his music onto her and Priscilla.
Charles Hughes, an author and director of the Lynne & Henry Turley Memphis Center at Rhodes College in Memphis, noted that Presley faced sexism and racism in the tabloids — and among some Elvis fans — throughout her life, especially surrounding her relationship to another icon, Michael Jackson.
“There are very few people I can think of who had to do what she did … being the Presleys’ daughter, but being Michael Jackson’s ex-wife and being a mother and being in the public eye as long and as complicatedly as she was,” said Hughes.
She was 35 and a mother when her debut album “To Whom It May Concern” came out in 2003. The music was in the vein of the rock-pop sound influenced by Sheryl Crow, her sultry alto over distorted guitars and raw dark lyrics that hinted at her past relationships.
“The daring thing about her music, the daring thing about her recording career, the daring thing about her was her willingness to speak her truth,” said Joe Levy, editor at large at Billboard. “The songs on those first two records are more challenging, more daring, and more exciting for their lyrics than for their music.”
The album was well-received and certified gold, even though she didn’t play publicly very much, and it hit No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart. Her first single “Lights Out” reached a No. 18 peak on Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay. Over her career, she sold 836,000 albums, while her songs have drawn 9.5 million official streams in the U.S., according to Luminate.
Hughes said he still regularly…