In 1997, Lisa Marie Presley marked the 20th anniversary of her father’s death with a cover of “Don’t Cry Daddy.” Written by Mac Davis, the song was first recorded and released by Elvis Presley in 1969 and peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Throughout the next two decades, Lisa Marie would also continue releasing more duets commemorating her late father.
By the late ’90s, Lisa Marie was also starting to break out as an artist and released her debut album, To Whom It May Concern, in 2003. Exposing deeper personal ends, the 11-track album opened with one about her famous family, “Lights Out.”
Co-written by Presley, along with Glen Ballard and Clif Magness, “Lights Out” starts at the beginning, with the death of her father on Aug. 16, 1977. Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Lisa Marie visited Graceland often and spent time with her father following his divorce from her mother, Priscilla, in 1973, and even witnessed his death when she was 9 years old.
“I just had a feeling,” shared Lisa Marie. “He wasn’t doing well. All I know is I had it [a feeling], and it happened. I was obsessed with death at a very early age.”
You were a million miles behind
And I was crying every time I’d leave you
Then I didn’t want to see you
I still keep my watch two hours behind
Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis
Ooh, that’s where my family’s buried and gone (gone)
Oh yeah
Last time I was there I noticed a space left
Oh, next to them there in Memphis, yeah
In the damn back lawn
Released on April 8, 2003, To Whom It May Concern reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart and was later certified gold.
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“I’ve been through a lot of stuff.”
At this point in her life, Lisa Marie needed to unload everything that was bottled up for more than three decades of her life, from the death of her father to her two previous marriages, first to Danny Keough (1988-1994) and Michael Jackson (1994-1996).
“I’ve been through a lot of stuff,” Presley said in a 2003 interview.
The second single, “Sinking In” was a narrative of her marriage to Jackson.
Was it that I turned everyone against you?
Was it that I didn’t defend you?
Was it that I never had your back?
Was it that I was always trying to save you
And you never wanted me to?
Or was it that I loved you?
Throughout the album, Lisa Marie also revealed more from her personal world, including “So Lovely,” written about her children at the time with Keough, Riley and Benjamin. Lisa Marie later had two more children—Harper and Finley—with her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood. The song also touches on her father’s life and deteriorating health in the final years of his life.
While she was working on To Whom It May Concern, Presley was married to her third husband, actor Nicholas Cage, and remained with him until 2004. “There’s no reason to be careful anymore because everything is in that record,” said Presley to Rolling Stone in 2003. “It’s frustrating, sitting with all this for years and years, not having said a word. I want it understood where I’m coming from.”
She added, “You want to know who I am and what I am, it’s in here. This is how either f–ked up I am, or crazy or deranged or stupid or whatever you want to call it. This is me, and it’s from me, and that’s the only reason I did it.”
Lisa Marie later released her follow-up, Now What, in 2005, and her third and final album, Storm & Grace, in 2012.
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