Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of the late Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, died Thursday, hours after being hospitalized following an apparent cardiac arrest. She was 54. Born at the height of Elvis's fame in 1968, Lisa Marie Presley was seen as the princess to the man celebrated as "the King of rock 'n' roll." She launched her music career in 2003 with a debut studio album, “To Whom It May Concern,” which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and was certified gold that summer. She wrote almost all the lyrics on the album and co-wrote every melody. At the time, Lisa Marie Presley told Larry King that she had to “park” feelings of pressure and comparison to her legendary singer dad.
She launched her music career in 2003 with a debut studio album, “To Whom It May Concern,” which reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and was certified gold that summer. She wrote almost all the lyrics on the album and co-wrote every melody. At the time, Lisa Marie Presley told Larry King that she had to “park” feelings of pressure and comparison to her legendary singer dad.
Tributes to Presley poured in as news of her death spread Thursday. In an Instagram post, Rita Wilson said she and her husband, Tom Hanks, had recently spent time with the Presley family during the "Elvis" movie promotional tour "Our hearts are broken with the sudden and shocking passing of Lisa Marie Presley tonight," Wilson said. "Lisa Marie was so honest and direct, vulnerable, in a state of anticipation about the movie. She spoke so eloquently about her father, what the movie meant to her, that it was a celebration of her dad."
Actor John Travolta wrote that he’d miss his friend “but I know I’ll see you again.” “My love and heart goes out to Riley, Priscilla, Harper and Finley,” he wrote on Instagram, referring to her three surviving children and mother.
Lisa Marie Presley, who died Thursday aged 54, said last year that she was still grieving the death of her son. In 2020, Presley’s son Benjamin Keough died by suicide at the age of 27. Last July, she marked the second anniversary of Keough’s death on Instagram, sharing a photo of their matching foot tattoos. Last September, she wrote an essay for National Grief Awareness Day, in which she opened up about the loss of her son.
“My and my three daughters’ lives as we knew it were completely detonated and destroyed by his death. We live in this every. Single. Day,” she wrote. “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not ‘get over it,’ you do not ‘move on,’ period.” Presley also said in the essay that she found comfort in the company of people who have faced similar tragedy, adding that her daughters help keep her grounded. “I keep going for my girls,” she wrote. “I keep going because my son made it very clear in his final moments that taking care of his little sisters and looking out for them were on the forefront of his concerns and his mind. He absolutely adored them and they him.”
