This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“I just like to bite on my f—ing fingers,” sneers Lisa Marie Presley less than two minutes into her debut album. “I’m just a son of a bitch, no matter what you say.” That whirring sound you hear is Elvis spinning in his grave.
But while The King’s only daughter is obviously a long way from Daddy’s little girl these days, there’s no escaping the fact that she is very much her own woman on the gutsy To Whom It May Concern. After 35 years, a childhood in Graceland and three failed marriages — including one to Michael Jackson — Lisa Marie definitely has a tale to tell. And give her full marks for telling it like it is.
On these 11 tunes she pulls no punches, deletes no expletives and takes on prisoners with her searing, confessional lyrics, which seem to take direct aim at her creepy relationship with Jacko (“You’re in some blind elation, a kind of delusion” … “I lost my trust in you / You were dangerous and scary”), her nanosecond marriage to Nic Cage (“When I turned my back you cut my throat”) and her father’s untimely death (“I wish that I had spent just a little more time with you”).
Too bad much of Presley’s mesmerising lyrical boldness is negated by the unengaging cliche blandness of these tunes. Time and time again on this 50-minute disc, the raw edges of her words are blunted into slabs of generic angry-gal pop-rock by the slick melodies and overproduction of Alanis Morissette mentor Glen Ballard and Tori Amos producer Eric Rosse. This sad gap between the talk and the rock is most glaring on her first single Lights Out, whose radio-ready hooks stand in stark contrast to Presley’s unsentimental view of her former hearth and home: “Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis,” she says. “That’s where my family’s dead and gone / Last time I was there I noticed a space left / Next to them … in the damn back lawn.” That’s right — she’s singing about being buried next to her father at Graceland.
If they can get him to stop spinning first, that is.
https://youtu.be/TofGi99nx00
