David Bowie’s daughter isn’t feeling under pressure when it comes to her own musical career. Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones, whom the late rocker shared with wife Iman, released her debut album Xandri, April 2. And in the run-up to showcasing her music with the world on the 12-song album, the 24-year-old gave heartfelt nods to her dad Bowie (real name David Robert Jones) who died after battling cancer in 2016 at age 69.
On March 14, Lexi shared on her Instagram a childhood photo showing her father carrying her, set to her cover of his 1971 hit “Life on Mars?,” captioning the post, “Papa.”
Over the subsequent weeks, Lexi shared more glimpses at her upbringing, posting videos of herself cuddling a dog inside a pen and playing in the snow, the latter of which is set to her album track “Through All the Time.”
Lexi’s artistic talents don’t end with music. Like her dad, she is also a painter. In addition to music and images from her childhood, Bowie and Iman’s daughter has also showcased her artwork on social media over the years.
While Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, 53, whose mom is the Grammy winner’s ex-wife Angie Bowie, built a career as a director, helming films such as Moon and Warcraft, Lexi had largely kept out of the spotlight until now, focusing on her painting and music in recent years.
“She says I am overprotective,” Iman explained in a 2018 interview Porter magazine. “But I told her, this can all wait, it isn’t going anywhere. Have a life that is private while you can, because one day soon it is going to be public, so enjoy this.”
At the time, the supermodel-who was married to Bowie for 23 years until his death-emphasised that she was aware that the interest in the then-18-year-old came down to who her parents are. “Every agency, every designer, called me to say: ‘If she wants to, we’d love for her to model for us.’ I said: ‘No, she doesn’t,'” Iman said. “I know why they wanted to her to model. It’s because she is David Bowie’s daughter.”
Instead, she wanted her daughter to feel a sense of normalcy in her life. And that was also the case for her and Bowie. “It was a beautiful, ordinary life and that was what was great about it,” Iman told Harper’s Bazaar in January 2021. “We could live in New York, pick up our daughter from school, walk everywhere…You know, I wish we had had more years.”