It’s a little weird watching Ted’s voice get misty-eyed about Nelson Riddle, but here we are.
Nine albums in and Seth MacFarlane still has to remind people he’s not doing some ironic Rat Pack cosplay. “The last thing I wanted to do was more fucking jokes,” he says, recalling the day a record label asked what kind of album he wanted to make. “I said, ‘I’d love to do an actual serious orchestral recording of great songs.’ And astonishingly, they said yes.”
Cut to 2024, and MacFarlane is rifling through 1,200 boxes of Sinatra’s original arrangements—the real-deal charts once overseen by Frank Jr., now gifted to him by Tina Sinatra. Among the unearthed treasures were a Nelson Riddle arrangement of “The Shadow of Your Smile,” and the infamous “Lush Life” session that Sinatra walked out of halfway through. “He said, ‘Let’s pick it up again in about a year.’ And then never did,” MacFarlane says. “So we finished it.”
This, by the way, isn’t a lounge act. It’s Abbey Road. It’s 55-piece orchestras. It’s orchestral flexing with “classical-level musicality” that MacFarlane says demands more of the listener “in a good way.”
“It used to be that all the work happened before you walked into the studio,” he says. “Now it’s all done after the fact, and yeah, you lose something. You lose the happy accidents.”
Happy accidents, apparently, were not what kept Sinatra from recording some of these cuts. “There were a couple lines I looked at and thought, ‘Yeah, this is probably why Frank didn’t want to record this,’” he says. “Even in 1910, you might not have been able to get away with it.” So he rewrote a few lyrics—quietly, invisibly. “It’s like working with a celebrity writing a book. You’re the ghostwriter. Don’t leave fingerprints.”
The album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, plays like a sad love story that ends in a dim hotel bar. “Our narrator doesn’t end up in the best spot,” MacFarlane laughs. “That’s all Joel McNeely. He always picks the track order. And yeah, there’s a bit of a story arc there.” There’s also a cut he refused to include because it was just too much of a bummer. Sinatra didn’t release it. Neither did MacFarlane. “Very meta,” he smirks.
Still, there’s more where that came from. “Out of those boxes, there’s probably two albums’ worth we haven’t touched,” he says. “But orchestras are expensive, man.”
Of course, MacFarlane’s not just sipping bourbon with a mic stand and a pocket square. He’s also producing the new Naked Gun reboot—yes, the one with Liam Neeson. “He’s probably the only actor alive who could do it,” MacFarlane says. “That Robert Stack-type. Plays it straight. Doesn’t try to be funny. That’s what makes it work.”
He’s also revamping The ’Burbs (“We’re giving it more of a mystery backbone”) and prepping Ted Season 2, which, despite his own disbelief, was the most-watched comedy across all platforms for two months straight. “People just want to laugh their asses off,” he says. “Not everything has to win a fucking Emmy.”
MacFarlane isn’t totally dismissive of modern music, but let’s just say he’s not convinced Irving Berlin would’ve thrived on TikTok. “I’ve hunted far and wide to find someone who can do what Irving Berlin did,” he says. “Doesn’t exist. I don’t know what was in the water back then, but it’s gone.”
He still performs with orchestras because, in his words, “It’s like crack.” He loves it. And he swears that’s all it is. “I’m not doing an impression,” he says. “I do it because I love it.”
Which might just be the most uncynical thing Seth MacFarlane has ever said.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.
