We went to Seth MacFarlane with a simple question. In this new robust era of musical theater and film—with the roaring successes of newly minted classics like Hamilton and La La Land—what was his favorite show? It seemed like an obvious pairing: The creator of Family Guy, Ted, and this fall's space adventure The Orville, who is himself a Grammy-nominated crooner (his new album In Full Swing drops in September), must be loving this musical moment. Right? Actually, no. He thinks it’s… unremarkable. Actually, he hasn’t seen a show recently that even came close to 1947’s Brigadoon. In fact, he hasn’t really liked anything since Ashman and Menken were writing soundtracks for Disney films like Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid.
So Seth MacFarlane is a bit nostalgic when it comes to musicals—to say the least. Okay, fine. To follow up, we asked him if there was literally one song out of all the songs that were sung in the past ten years that he thought showed promise for the future. He said no. According to him, songwriting and scoring have been on a heavy decline since the golden era of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
It’s an arch opinion, yes. But MacFarlane is at least qualified to have it. (Family Guy is beloved for its dirty musical numbers, which are often composed in a classic style.) And, at some level, his saltiness toward all the hype around musicals these days is refreshing. Even if you don’t agree with him, MacFarlane’s hot takes, transcribed below, are hilariously cranky.
GQ: What’s your favorite musical that’s currently playing?
Seth MacFarlane: It’s hard to say. A lot of Broadway musicals nowadays get a lot of hype and they come along and they make a lot of noise, and then a few years later they’re just kind of gone while The Music Man still chugs along. I don’t know that they’re playing by the same rules. There’s a timelessness to Broadway shows that might need to be revisited if they want to have staying power. The shows that were written in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s have withstood the test of time and can truly be called great shows. No one can deny that a show like The King and I is a great piece of art.
If you look at the songs from the golden age of musicals, they’re not really specific to a genre. They’re not big-band songs of the era, they’re not rock songs obviously, they’re not pop songs. They’re just pure melodies. To me that’s the magic. A show like Rent is fantastic for what it is, but it’s very much a product of the ’90s, and it sounds like the ’90s. Seeing Brigadoon in 2017, the songs are going to be as pure and as timeless as they were when they were written.
Are there any songs from the shows that have been on Broadway recently that you’ve liked?Nothing that’s stuck with me. Nothing that’s evoked feeling like a song like “If I Loved You” from Carousel.
What about Off Broadway or on TV or in the musical films?
It’s hard. It’s really a lost art. I gotta say no. There's really nothing. They’re playing by a different rule book. In many ways, Ashman and Menken were the last real songwriting team to achieve that kind of timelessness. Before Ashman died, they managed to make their mark in the great American songbook. But as you get more into recent years, it’s almost impossible to find. What are the songs that you can say that is a truly great song? That belongs in the hall of fame right next to “Climb Every Mountain”?
That’s pretty dark.
The music business has changed in a lot of ways, and I don’t think anyone would deny that it’s changed for the worse. Great, earnest music is a lot harder to find. The craftsmanship is just not there the way it once was.
What about recent musical scores? Have you enjoyed any of those?
You’re never going to get rave reviews from me for anything new until things change. Film music is in a rough spot. It’s just being done differently. There’s a trend called “striping,” where you have the woodwinds and the brass and the percussion and the strings all playing their parts individually, and then the mixer will go in the studio and put them all together, and that’s how the film score is made. And to me it’s like if you were shooting Casablanca, you would shoot all of Bogart's stuff first, and then Ingrid Bergman’s stuff, and then you edit them together and try to make a performance. It wouldn’t work. Because they’re not hearing each other, they’re not seeing each other. There’s an antiseptic quality to film scores. If you listen to John Williams, the way he’s writing, it conspicuously has a life that his contemporaries today don’t have. Because the band’s all there in the same room and they’re playing off each other. It’s not left to post-production. When it’s there, it’s there. It’s live. So film scoring has suffered in its own way.
Looking to the future, is there anyone you’re excited about, anyone who might revive the genre?
Boy, you’ve got the wrong guy for this interview, huh. My apologies. No, but I remain hopeful. Will we have another Rodgers and Hammerstein in our lifetime? It’s possible. I haven’t seen it yet. But it is possible. It’s a tough call. It was an era of high musicality. You look at what Sinatra was doing at the time. Some of the albums that he was releasing—they were mainstream albums—and you listen to them now and his ballad albums sound like light opera. They’re really esoteric and involved and rich and legitimate. And that was pop music. That to me, more than anything, shows what an era of high musicality that was and what a decline we’ve seen.
I try to say, well, that was that time, this is this time, and to hold them to different standards. But if you hold them to different standards you’re kind of cheating.
