Singer Lisa Marie Presley felt inspired to start work on her new album Storm & Grace after cutting a number of "despicable and toxic people" out of her life.

Elvis Presley's daughter last released a record in 2005, and the star reveals she had to completely change her life before she could begin work on her 2012 project.

She tells British newspaper The Sun, "I just needed a break, a change of scenery. I had to get rid of everything that was around me. I felt I was in a draconian web that I had helped spin and I needed to unspin.

"It was only by clearing out the bad people - 'friends', employees, everyone with the exception of my immediate family - that I was inspired to write songs again."

Presley admits she had become "unhappy and disturbed", but she was able to move forward by re-assessing her friendship groups.

She adds, "I was very angry before (doing it). But I didn't know why I was angry because I could not see what was around me, what I was connected to. I was surrounded by unbelievably disgusting, despicable and toxic people. I cannot even begin to explain it...

"I was angry, unhappy and disturbed, and because my life was being puppeteered I was fighting a lot. But getting away, waking up with the bad stuff gone, meant good stuff came up. I began to write again."

Presley left California and relocated to Britain after the birth of her twins, Harper and Finley, in 2008. She now lives in the English countryside with her husband Michael Lockwood.