Lisa Marie Presley

Los Angeles, Feb. 11 (Reuters): Twenty-five years after Elvis Presley’s death, the only child of the king of rock ‘n’ roll is launching her own musical career with a newly issued record that has some critics all shook up.

Lights Out, the bluesy first single from Lisa Marie Presley’s upcoming debut album, was officially released to radio stations around the country yesterday by Sony Corp.’s Capitol Records, the latest example of pop music progeny following in the footsteps of famous parents.

Whether Lisa Marie, 35, achieves the success of Jakob Dylan, Julian Lennon or Hank Williams Jr. remains to be seen.

Her recording debut poses the twin challenges of overcoming inevitable comparisons to her legendary father and years of tabloid headlines borne of her high-profile former marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

But Lights Out, which contains an eerie lyrical reference to her Presley heritage, has received glowing early reviews.

Los Angeles Times music writer Robert Hilburn calls the song “a powerful, hauntingly personal work” and writes that Presley’s “gutsy, blues-edged voice has a distinctive flair.”

Bill Ellis, writing for the Memphis, Tennessee, Commercial Appeal, says that judging from a four-track sampler circulated to critics, the album is “better than you might think.”

“Lisa Marie is a solid singer with plenty of character in her husky voice, a cross somewhere between Sheryl Crow and Cher,” he wrote.

The album, To Whom It May Concern, is due out April 8, and Lights Out actually has received some advance airplay since it was leaked to a Memphis station last month.

Presley, who was 9 when her father died in 1977 and was raised by her mother, actress Priscilla Presley, confronts her family’s past with haunting lyrics: “Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis/That's where my family's buried and gone/Last time I was there I noticed a space left/Next to them there in Memphis in the damn back lawn.”

“I never wanted to write a song, ever, about anything indicating my genetic code whatsoever, or my background. But if I had to do it, then Lights Out would be that song,” Presley said in promotional materials for the album.