Some people remember it as if it was yesterday: the day the “King” ungracefully fell from his throne and met his maker.
When Elvis Presley died in August of ’77, he left behind a plethora of super model girlfriends, an angry ex-wife and a button-nosed, nine-year-old daughter named Lisa Marie.
Nearly living her entire life in the spotlight, Princess Presley was somehow able to remain fairly enigmatic.
She married a musician whom she quietly divorced after having two children.
She then suffered a brief moment of insanity when she married Michael Jackson for 20 months in the mid-90s. And yet an even briefer moment of insanity when she married and divorced actor Nicholas Cage, a self-proclaimed Elvis-freak, for four months last year.
The tabloids said she’s a believer in Scientology (all the rage in Hollywood and on Fourth Street in downtown Cincinnati), but that’s about all we knew.
Presley has shied away from tell-all autobiographies or partaking in interviews…until now.
At age 35 and with the release of her first album, “To Whom It May Concern,” Presley is now the Princess of Press.
After the release of a country/blues-flavored single, “Lights Out,” Presley graces the cover of Rolling Stone and has made an appearance on the Howard Stern Show, eager with album promotion and gossip on her private life.
Suddenly, Miss Private Presley has a lot to say. But Elvis fans, like myself, don’t want the gossip.
I don’t want to hear about her having sex with Michael Jackson-I want to hear her sing and see if genetics had anything to do with scoring a record deal or if it was entirely for publicity’s sake.
After downloading the video for “Lights Out” on VH1.com, I realized Ms. Presley has a long way to go.
Her voice reminds me of a weakened Winona Judd and her dance moves remind me of patrons in a Karaoke bar-not fluid, not graceful, not anything special.
She’s definitely not the parent scaring, hip-shaker her father was.
Her lyrics, although dark at times, are not as clumsy as her dance moves on her maiden voyage of singing entertainment.
Lisa Marie sticks to her no-holds-bar persona, but she lacks a certain something-her influential heritage.
No one would have batted an eye if it wasn’t for the fact that her father had 114 charted singles and 31 top-ten hits.
He was the quintessential sex idol, the God-fearing Army boy with a velvety voice and the owner of hips so unruly that Ed Sullivan demanded they not be shown.
But Lisa Marie’s vocals lack the quiver and her lip lacks the twitch. At 35, she is lucky to be able to enter an industry where youth and beauty exempt any sort of required talent.
She may be Lisa Marie Presley, vocalist extraordinaire, but for the rest of world, she will remain the daughter of a fallen King.