Billy Joel’s Kid To Release First Record

Feeling old? If not, this should do it. Tomorrow, Alexa Ray Joel, 21-year-old daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, releases her first record, “Sketches.”

Alexa Ray has decided to skip the regular route of going to a major record company and instead will release her debut EP (short for ‘extended play’) on her own independent label.

Fans will be able to buy it from her Web site — www.alexarayjoel.com — as well as download it from all the usual places on the Internet.

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You can already hear three of the songs on Alexa Ray’s MySpace page. They include “The Heart of Me,” “Come Home to Me Do” and “Sapphire Night.” They are all bluesy pop numbers in which Alexa accompanies herself on piano.

She’s more Melissa Manchester circa 1973 than Billy Joel, but you can definitely pick up Dad’s genetic influence in her recordings.

In any case, Alexa Ray is here to stay, and she’s serious about her career. She joins a not-so-select group of second-generation pop stars like Julian Lennon, his brother Sean, Ben and Sally Taylor (Carly Simon and James Taylor's kids), the Wilson Phillips gang, Ricky Nelson’s sons and Sting’s son Joe Sumner's group Fiction Plane.

Interestingly, most of those artists have opted not to sign with big record companies and put out their own CDs.

Some, like Ben Taylor and Julian Lennon, started with major labels and then went indie. Sean Lennon’s done the reverse for his upcoming release, opting to go with family company Capitol. His first album was on a small label.

Of course, cryptographers will pour over Alexa’s lyrics to see if there’s anything about her mom’s soured marriage to a philandering architect.

But something tells me the message — if there is one — will be fairly hidden. The girl has more important things to sing about, I should think.