Lisa Marie Presley, the singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis Presley, died on January 12 after a medical emergency and a brief hospitalization. She was 54.
“Priscilla Presley and the Presley family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Lisa Marie,” Sam Mast, a representative for Priscilla Presley, her mother, said in a statement. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”
Earlier in the day, Priscilla Presley said in a statement that her daughter had been receiving medical attention but did not share more information.
The daughter of one of the most celebrated artists in history, Presley followed the career path of her father, Elvis Presley. She released three albums in which she set out to distinguish her rock sound while also paying homage to the man who forever changed the American soundscape by blending blues, gospel, pop and country.
Her music career, however, never exploded as it had for her father. But his influence was evident in her songs and some lyrics. In her debut album from 2003, “To Whom It May Concern,” she sings in the bluesy, melancholic song “Lights Out” that “someone turned the lights out there in Memphis. That’s where my family’s buried and gone.”
In 2018, she co-produced an album celebrating Elvis’s love of gospel music and sang along with a recording of him on one of the songs.
From 1994 to 1996, she was married to Michael Jackson. Together, the pair — one the daughter of the king of rock ’n’ roll, the other regarded as the king of pop — attracted the glare of cameras and bountiful attention. In 2002, she married the actor Nicolas Cage, but the couple separated within a four-month period that same year.
Before Jackson, she married the musician Danny Keough in 1988. They separated after six years and had two children together, including the actress Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020. In recent years, she was married to Michael Lockwood, with whom she had twin daughters, Finley Lockwood and Harper Lockwood. They divorced in 2021.
