This week:
Lights Out in Memphis
We talk a lot about the MTV generation, but we ignore the VH1 generation.
We’re the geriatric millennials (gross) whose parents thought MTV was “too rude.” We are the ones who still play The Corrs’ “Breathless” on loop. Who can recreate every moment of Céline Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is” music video. Who think that life is grand, as long as Rob Thomas is still making music.
It’s the VH1 generation that is attached to Lisa Marie Presley’s music career.
It’s gut-wrenching that Presley, the daughter of the King, died this week after suffering a suspected cardiac arrest. As an entertainment writer and editor, my mind shot in so many different directions: Her father! Michael Jackson! Nicolas Cage! Just trying to be her own entity!
I remember when she came out with her single, “Lights Out,” in 2003. There had to have been big record label muscle for it to make it onto the VH1 portion of my “scarfing down a Pop Tart before driving to school” morning ritual.
I know it’s the era of nepo babies, but there was something about the song’s success that didn’t seem “gifted” to her in that way. It engaged in our fascination with her father, and worked through what it’s like to come from her background and be expected to be famous, regardless of your talent or ambition.
Watching the music video is a strange experience. She looks so much like her father, and her vocal stylings are gruff and guttural like his—yet also uniquely hers. Throughout the song, she reckons with her legacy. “Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis,” she sings, directly engaging with her family history. “That’s where my family are buried and gone,” goes another line. As the song ends, she sings, “Little son of a bitch from Memphis.”
It all just felt so…cool. A lot of times, when children of rock stars dip their toe in performance, music or otherwise, it’s so cringey. But there was an art to what Lisa Marie was doing. A point. And, it was good.
There are two kinds of people: those who did not know that pop star Sara Bareilles wrote the score for a Broadway musical called Waitress, and those who so deeply cherish one song from that show, “She Used to Be Mine,” that they consider it to be another human emotion, like sadness or regret. I have seen videos of, no exaggeration, at least 50 people singing this song. But to see Bareilles herself perform it with Brandi Carlile? Be right back. I need to run to Costco to buy a pallet of Kleenex boxes.
