ASK people about the notion of an album by Lisa Marie Presley and the word skeptical comes up a lot. The only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she has been tabloid fodder from the moment of her birth 35 years ago, and to this point she's done little to demonstrate that she didn't deserve such a fate. A bewildering 20-month marriage to Michael Jackson in the 90's — epitomized by the couple's cringingly awkward televised kiss at an MTV awards show, and Ms. Presley's memorable suggestion in a "Primetime Live" interview that anyone who harbored questions about their relationship could "Eat it!" — solidified a perception of her as a brassy, unpredictable flake. That she married the actor Nicolas Cage and the couple separated within a four-month period last year only made matters worse.

This lurid back-story hardly predisposes anyone to take Ms. Presley seriously as a recording artist. But such respect is precisely what she wants — and on the strength of the pointedly titled "To Whom It May Concern," which is set for release on April 8, she's likely to get it. Produced by Eric Rosse, who has previously worked with Tori Amos, the album is a surprisingly strong statement about all that her life has been and all she would like it to become. It may be difficult to see someone as absurdly privileged as Ms. Presley as an underdog — according to Forbes, for example, Elvis Presley Enterprises, which she solely owns, earned $37 million in fiscal 2002, a number that does not reflect the subsequent multimillion sales of her father's "30 No. 1 Hits" CD, which came out last fall. But she clearly sees "To Whom It May Concern" as her shot at significance — and she's determined to make sure it doesn't fail.

Standing in front of her six-piece band in a North Hollywood rehearsal studio, Ms. Presley looked less like a glamour-girl pop star than the local high school's punk-rock malcontent. She's physically slight, and she was dressed in an orange sweatshirt, baggy brown pants and sneakers, with her hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail. She will begin doing club dates and promotional shows for radio stations in May or June, with a tour as a support act likely to follow. Playing live is a new experience for her, and it has taken some getting used to.

After the band completed an aggressive rendition of "Better Beware," an angry send-off to a former lover, Ms. Presley vented frustration at her own mistakes. "That was terrible," she said. "I'm still finding my way through this new, improved version." An extended ending to the song "Indifferent" prompted her to impatiently declare, "It feels like it's going on forever." Her manager, Scooter Weintraub, who was overseeing the session, calmed her down. "With the drama of an audience in a club, it will feel different," he assured her.

Afterward, Ms. Presley sat on a broken-down couch in the studio's loft space and dug heartily into a take-out burrito dinner. "I'm much better when no one's watching," she joked about the rehearsal. "So I'm going to have to get over that somehow. I'll probably have to do it three or four times before I find my groove. But I love playing with the band. That's more what this is about for me. As for flying around to promote my album, I don't find that easy at all."

Last month Ms. Presley's label, Capitol Records, released "Lights Out," the first single from "To Whom It May Concern," to radio stations. As part of the effort to recast her image, Ms. Presley dutifully trekked around the country for a string of on-air interviews. An easy-rolling, roots-oriented guitar groove, "Lights Out" includes some of the album's most personal imagery — and, for that reason, Ms. Presley strenuously argued against its being the first single. "Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis," her lyrics run. "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."

The song has been well received. "Bluesy and bittersweet, it's good enough to make daddy proud," Entertainment Weekly stated in a B+ review, and the single has been added to playlists in major radio markets around the country, including New York and Los Angeles. VH1 immediately began showing the stylish video for the song and plans to broadcast an "All Access" documentary timed to the album's release.

But the radio hosts Ms. Presley spoke to often seemed more interested in asking her about Mr. Jackson, whose appearance on ABC's "20/20" in a documentary by the British journalist Martin Bashir had recently triggered a fresh round of controversy about his obsessive interest in children, his plastic surgeries and his all-around weirdness. She took the inquiries in stride.

"I walked away from that a long time ago," she said of her marriage to Mr. Jackson, whom she divorced in 1996. "I was still relatively young, and trying to decide what would be better for me: being with someone who doesn't have anything, and then they get trampled and have no ego because they just become `Mr. Presley,' or being with someone whose situation is comparable to mine." Before Mr. Jackson, Ms. Presley was married to the musician Danny Keough for six years; they had two children together and remain close friends.

"I was hoping that we'd be more equal," she continued about Mr. Jackson. "I was in love with him at the time — and he doesn't always act the way he did in that interview. I did feel bad about that — the director followed him around for eight months and edited it down to two hours. You can manipulate it any way you want. I mean, somebody could do that to me. But I'm sure I had the same reaction everybody else did when they saw it: it was a train wreck. I don't have to clean up that mess.

While 35 is ancient for an artist releasing a debut album these days, Ms. Presley claimed that music has always been her first love. "My mom came to rehearsal one day," she recalled, "and she said, `I remember when you were 3 or 4, you didn't want to go play with your friends because you had your 45's and you'd rather listen to them.' I was always blasting music in my room, and it got me through all the tough times in my life."

Among her favorites she includes Aretha Franklin, Pat Benatar, Heart and Ms. Amos — "all those strong women," as she puts it.

Over the years she took singing lessons, wrote songs and recorded demos in studios she built at her various homes. She was reluctant to start a career as a singer, however, in large part because she feared the inevitable comparisons to her father.

Wary of producing work that would only subject her to withering criticism, Ms. Presley sought — including in her relationships, most notably her marriage to Mr. Jackson — a collaborator who could help her sharpen her musical vision. In 1998 she seemed to complete that search when she signed a contract with Java Records, a label owned by Glen Ballard, who is best known for producing Alanis Morissette's blockbuster album, "Jagged Little Pill." Ms. Presley essentially completed an album with Mr. Ballard and other producers, but an executive shake-up at Capitol, Java's parent company, delayed its release. In May 2001, Andrew Slater, who had produced debut albums by Fiona Apple, Macy Gray and the Wallflowers, took over as Capitol's president. Deciding what to do about Ms. Presley's "long-belabored" project was among his first priorities.

"Like everyone else I was skeptical," Mr. Slater said. "Was she a celebrity who just wanted to be a pop star? Then when I listened to what she'd done, I was confused by the record but intrigued by her. For me, it's pretty immediate: I either believe the singer, or I don't. I believed her, and I looked at the lyrics and realized that she was a good songwriter stuck in the wrong musical context."

Mr. Slater shared his impressions with Ms. Presley, who liked what she heard. Mr. Ballard's label deal expired — he eventually moved Java to Def Jam — but Ms. Presley elected to stay with Capitol. Stealing time from his new corporate duties, Mr. Slater produced "Lights Out" — at one point, in affectionate exasperation, offering the stubborn singer $50 to enunciate the song's closing line more clearly, an offer she accepted. But when he learned of Ms. Presley's admiration for Ms. Amos, he recommended that Mr. Rosse produce her album.

Initially, Mr. Rosse was, well, skeptical. "It was a surprising call to get, just because of who she is," Mr. Rosse said. "But I was struck when I heard her voice. It's got this deep, low, husky quality — I got a cool vibe from it. I thought if we started over and stripped the songs down, I could create the right musical framework for her." In the end, Mr. Rosse honored the rock, folk and country sources of Ms. Presley's sound, but complicated them with smart guitar treatments and alluring keyboard and rhythmic effects. The result is contemporary, but not at all contrived, and Ms. Presley's vocals more than hold their own in the foreground of the arrangements. Her soulful drawl is an inheritance from her father, though you'd be unlikely to make that explicit connection if you didn't know her last name.

Mr. Rosse describes himself as "obscure" and "underground," and the decision to have him produce Ms. Presley was part of a strategy to keep down the volume of hype on "To Whom It May Concern" — relatively speaking, of course. "Lights Out" was released without much fanfare, and, in the face of an avalanche of requests, Ms. Presley, Mr. Weintraub and Mr. Slater are being cautious about how many — and what type — of media appearances she's making. "This is not an overblown campaign," Mr. Slater said. Most significantly, she has been interviewed by Diane Sawyer for a special that is scheduled to be broadcast on ABC on Thursday.

"Lisa's drive is not about being a star — she's already a celebrity," said Mr. Weintraub, who was approached by Ms. Presley three years ago because she admired the career he had helped shape for Sheryl Crow, whom he also manages. "It wasn't, `Find me some songs, put me in the right clothes and let's capitalize on my name.' Her celebrity is a pitfall, actually. People have seen her in the tabloids and, somewhat rightfully, their attitude about the album is, `What's that going to be like?' My strategy is, first, to just let people hear the music, and then to let her get out there live to show people that she's real, that she's got what it takes."

In the ballad "Nobody Noticed It," Ms. Presley responds to an "E! True Hollywood Story" documentary about her father's last days that she said "tried to take his dignity away." Over a brooding, dramatic musical bed, she sings, "And I wanted you to know that I haven't forgotten/ Well, they tried to make you look broken/ But not while I'm living." That search for respectability, that desire not simply to be a punch line, is her own struggle, as well as her father's.

Ms. Presley was 9 when her father died in 1977, but their relationship was extremely close. In just one example of how she was indulged, Presley flew with his daughter on a private jet to Idaho after she mentioned that she had never seen snow. They landed, she played in the snow for half an hour, they flew home. "I just knew that he adored me," she said, smiling dreamily as she thought about her father. "I wasn't thinking, `Oooh, I get to fly,' or anything like that. I never thought that it was weird or unusual. I just knew he was crazy about me, and that was just him showing his love for me. He was just doing what was in his heart.

"That's part of the problem with my love life," she continued. "I'm looking for someone similar to him, and nobody could ever compare. He was so extraordinary a presence — not even as an entertainer, just as a person. Yes, he sang well, and, yes, the songs were great, but that was him coming through the music. He was bigger than life — and he still is."

As "To Whom It May Concern" is about to come out, do the inevitable comparisons still frighten her? "I just had to park it," she said, taking a deep breath. "It would drive me crazy if I didn't. To a certain extent, it's just going to happen, and I'm, like, `You can't let yourself not do anything because you're afraid of it.' I don't think anything I'm doing is like what he did, and I've never claimed it is. It's my own thing. I'm just trying to be an artist. I'm not trying to be Elvis Presley's child. And I'm not trying to run from it either."

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