Latest news with #LushLife
Boston Globe
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The Newport Jazz Festival begins with swing, soul, and a sprinkle of pop
Advertisement Carter, 88, first appeared at Newport with Davis 60 years ago. In recent years, he has often brought his unparalleled touch and famously dapper suites to the festival's smaller stages. He had no trouble keeping that sense of intimacy at the large Fort Stage with his Foursight Quartet. Saxophonist Jimmy Greene, pianist Renee Rosnes, and the hard swinging drummer Payton Crossley all showed why they're among Carter's favorite collaborators. An extended Carter bass solo touched on everything from Bach to 'You Are My Sunshine' while the audience remained impressively hushed. Not all of the jazz came from the elders. The day started with Tyreek McDole, who, in his mid-20s, is clearly ready to be added to the short list of current noteworthy male jazz vocalists. Singing Billy Strayhorn's 'Lush Life' with just pianist Caelan Cardello, McDole's rich baritone cast the kind of spell that even the loud ringing of a phone in the crowd couldn't break. Advertisement South Africa's BCUC, Sanabria was preceded on the Harbor Stage by another one of the standout acts, alto saxophonist Darius Jones, who like Sanabria is New York-based but hasn't played Boston in over a decade. Jones was the day's main representative of the avant-garde, opening his trio set with the scorched earth of 'We Outside.' Keyboardist Uri Caine has often been another part of the outsider jazz world, but on Friday he crafted groove jazz with Christian McBride, DJ Logic, and Questlove, who reconvened as a group called The Philadelphia Experiment. Questlove also ended the day with The Roots, the house band for 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' (and the unofficial house band of hip-hop). Their mixtape-style set still sounded fresh nearly 40 years after the group's inception. Sofi Tukker, a dance music duo that formed at Brown University, garnered a massive turnout. Most of their material was drawn from 'butter,' a record they made in Brazil with producer Marcio Arantes, who joined in on bass. Even in downtempo jazz-adjacent mode, it was still a dance party, bolstered by tropical versions of their hit 'Purple Hat' and 'All That She Wants' by Ace of Base. Advertisement The end of the afternoon featured back-to-back performances inspired by classic soul. Like The tender falsetto crooning of Thee Sacred Souls's lead singer Josh Lane showed why the band has become the most popular of the West Coast soul ballad revivalists. Lane spent much of the set in the aisles directly serenading the audience, and offered one of the only political statements of the day when he argued that Palestinian, Congolese, and Sudanese people deserved freedom. Raye and Thee Sacred Souls – artists often found at pop festivals – were well-received, but so were the heavy hitters from the jazz world. It was an indication that while Newport might have found the formula for commercial success, it still draws an attentive and enthusiastic audience of jazz lovers. NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL At Fort Adams State Park, Newport, R.I., Friday Noah Schaffer can be reached at
Forbes
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Seth MacFarlane Charts Higher Than Ever, With A Little Help From Frank Sinatra
Seth MacFarlane's Lush Life debuts at No. 17 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart, marking his ... More highest-ever showing and a top 10 launch on two jazz tallies. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 20: Seth MacFarlane attends "Back from the Ink: Restored Animated Shorts" during the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival at TCL Chinese Theatre on April 20, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo byfor TCM) Seth MacFarlane is better known for his hugely successful TV career than his work in music, as series like Family Guy and American Dad rank among the longest-running in animated history. In addition to working daily as a titan of that industry, MacFarlane — who voices dozens of characters on his own programs — is also a prolific musician, known for his love of the Great American Songbook. He's already released more than half a dozen albums and scored multiple Grammy nominations in the traditional pop field, and this week, his latest full-length not only brings him back to the Billboard charts, but helps him reach a new career peak. Lush Life Earns Seth MacFarlane a New Bestseller Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements debuts on a trio of Billboard charts in the United States this week. It opens inside the top 10 on two genre-specific rankings and comes in at No. 17 on the Top Album Sales tally. While that marks the title's lowest starting point on the charts, it's also a new best showing for MacFarlane. The comedian and crooner reaches the top 20 on the Top Album Sales chart for the very first time in his music career. Lush Life opens inside that area with a little more than 4,400 pure purchases during its first tracking frame (per Luminate). Seth MacFarlane's Previous Best Showing Before this frame, he had only cracked the top 40 once, more than a decade ago, when Holiday for Swing! opened and peaked at No. 38. Back when the Top Album Sales list featured far more than the 50 spaces it does today, Music Is Better Than Words spent a single turn at No. 111, and those are his only three placements on the tally. Seth MacFarlane's New Top 10s Lush Life is far more successful on two of Billboard's style-focused rankings. The collection, which sees MacFarlane recording music written for Frank Sinatra that the legend never got to make during his lifetime, launches at No. 3 on the Traditional Jazz Albums chart and No. 4 on the slightly broader Jazz Albums tally. He's now collected half a dozen top 10s on both of those rosters.
Buzz Feed
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
16 Celebrities Who Quit Being Famous
Recently, Reddit user u/fulthrottlejazzhands asked, "Who is a celebrity that gave it all up at the height of fame to go live a 'normal' life?" Here's a look at what these former (and not so former) actors got up to after they left Hollywood: After playing Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Karyn Parsons co-created her own sitcom, Lush Life, but it was soon canceled. She eventually moved to New York, where she studied filmmaking, met her husband, and started a family. She told Vice, "My interests were changing. It became very difficult to do everything, to memorize lines for a part and have to get someone to last-minute watch the kids — to race across town and do all that, and if you got a call back, do it again. I'd find myself dropping the ball a lot." In 2005, following her acting career, Parsons founded Sweet Blackberry, a nonprofit that teaches kids about the lesser-known aspects of Black history. She said, "When I was pregnant with my daughter, that's when I started really thinking about what are they going to teach her in school, and what am I supposed to teach her? How do I supplement her education as a parent? As I was talking a lot about Black history and stories that you don't hear about, my husband was like, 'You need to do this.'" Suggested by caseyrackham '90s teen heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas left his role on Home Improvement before the series ended, deciding instead to focus on his education at Columbia, Harvard, and St. Andrew's University. Though he returned to acting a few years later, in 2013, he once again disappeared from the public eye. JTT told People, "I'd been going nonstop since I was 8 years old. I wanted to go to school, to travel, and have a bit of a sit in a big library amongst books and students — that was pretty cool. It was a novel experience for me." Suggested by u/painandpets Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey on Malcolm in the Middle for seven seasons, left acting for good in 2010. After attending the University of Southern California, he's now a graduate student studying Victorian Literature. Jane Kaczmarek, who played his onscreen mother, recently reflected on the former actor: "He's very, very well. He did Malcolm for seven years. He started at 7; he ended at 14. He wasn't interested in acting at all." Suggest by u/WestCoastWaster Similarly, Malcolm in the Middle and Agent Cody Banks star Frankie Muniz also stepped away from acting, saying, "When I was on Malcolm, I was just so excited to be working on a show, but also in that same sense, when the show ended, I kind of left the business for a little bit. I started doing other things. I was racing cars. I joined a band." However, since taking a break from acting in 2006, Muniz is now set to return to Hollywood for a four-episode reboot of Malcolm in the Middle on Disney+. Suggest by u/enters_and_leaves Good Luck Charlie and Lemonade Mouth actor Bridgit Mendler traded in Hollywood for a Master's degree from MIT and a Doctor of Law degree from Harvard. She now works in the space industry as the CEO of her startup Northwood Space, which aims "to build satellite ground stations that are designed with mass production and customer flexibility first in mind." As she announced on social media, Mendler and her husband are also the parents of a 5-year-old son. She wrote, "Started fostering in 2021, adopted near Christmas of 2022. I'm so lucky—being a parent is the biggest gift and most defining experience there is." Suggested by u/shortstack3000 In 1997, following Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, comedian Rick Moranis stepped away from acting to focus on his two children after his wife, Anna, died from breast cancer. Although he's said it wasn't a "formal decision" to retire, he hasn't been seen on the big screen in several decades. In 2015, Moranis told The Hollywood Reporter, "I took a break, which turned into a longer break. But I'm interested in anything that I would find interesting. I still get the occasional query about a film or television role...I was working with really interesting people, wonderful people [in Hollywood]. I went from that to being at home with a couple of little kids, which is a very different lifestyle. But it was important to me. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. My life is wonderful." Suggested by u/Lostfroggy25 Disney star Kay Panabaker retired from acting in 2012, following roles in Summerland and Cyber Bully. Though she already had a degree in history from UCLA, she decided to go back to school and entered an 18-month animal program at Santa Fe College in Florida. Following that, she was hired as a zookeeper at Disney's Animal Kingdom. In 2016, she responded to a fan who asked her why she quit acting and said, "I just lost the love for acting. Life is short, we spend so much time at work, gotta do what you love :) and I love my job!!" Suggested by caseyrackham If you can believe it, Peter Ostrum, the actor who played Charlie in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, left the entertainment industry and became a dairy veterinarian. According to Ostrum, he stopped acting because "being in the film industry as a child was hard." In 2011, he told Hollywood Chicago, "In the end, leaving was the right decision. ... I don't have any regrets at all." Suggest by u/AardvarkStriking256 Erik von Detten, aka the '90s and '00s Disney star of The Princess Diaries and Brink! fame, eventually left acting behind and went into finance. He said to E! Online, "At that time, we didn't have Netflix and all these expanded options with thousands and thousands of roles. I would literally go for a length of time without any roles that I fit the bill for. I mean, you're either in the very top half a percent doing very well or, just very competitive." He said, "Since I was a kid, I wanted to have a large family. And, in Los Angeles, that requires a consistent, realistic income. So, the fickle nature of employment as an actor just wasn't consistent enough for me." Suggested by u/reader_of_lips Jennifer Stone, who played Harper on Wizards of Waverly Place, left acting behind and is now a registered nurse. In an Instagram post celebrating World Health Day in 2020, Stone announced that she was joining the "front lines" of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. She said, "A very good friend of out to me that today is #worldhealthday. It is also the day I went from a volunteer, then a student nurse, and now an RN resident. I just hope to live up to all of the amazing healthcare providers on the front lines now as I get ready to join them." Suggested by caseyrackham Though he hasn't left the spotlight entirely, Vampire Diaries star Ian Somerhalder officially retired from acting in 2019. Since stepping away, Somerhalder has focused on raising his kids on a farm with wife Nikki Reed, starting companies, and producing documentaries that focus on how "regenerative farming and improving the world's soil can help combat climate change." In a 2024 interview, Somerhalder said, 'I loved what I did for a really long time. I don't miss any of it. I love making films. I just did it for so long. We had an amazing run.' Suggested by u/UnkindnessOfRavens23 Rick Astley of "Never Gonna Give You Up" fame might be back in the spotlight now with new music, but the singer took a hefty 30-year-long break from the music industry when he was only 27. According to ITV, Astley's sudden retirement was prompted by burnout. In a 2023 interview, Astley spoke about his first music stint saying, "I didn't love the world of pop music, to be honest, because what I dreamed it was and what I wanted it to be, it kind of wasn't." Suggested by u/Separate-Passion-949 Entourage's Adrian Grenier, who left California for Texas, revealed that he stepped away from acting to focus on raising his family and connecting with nature. In an interview on Today with Hoda and Jenna, he said, "I was flying high for many years, two decades in Hollywood and growing up in New York, but I live a much more grounded life now. I decided I was going to live closer to nature and to commit to my wife and have a family and have a child, which I'm so excited about.' Though the actor says he isn't completely retired from acting, it would have to be a special project for him to head back to Hollywood. He said, "I'm only really taking roles that are aligned with my dharma and that I can be proud of because I want my kid to watch whatever I do and be proud of his dad." Suggested by u/JordanBelfort0 Phoebe Cates, of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins fame, left acting in the mid-'90s after marrying fellow actor Kevin Kline. Though she did make a small appearance in a 2001 movie as a favor to Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kline told Playboy magazine that the couple "agreed to alternate so that we're never working at the same time … [but] whenever it's been her slot to work, Phoebe has chosen to stay with the children." In addition to motherhood, Cates also owns and operates the Blue Tree boutique in New York City. Suggested by u/CokBlockinWinger Former child actor Shirley Temple announced her retirement in 1950 at the age of only 22 because she "had enough of pretend." She eventually got married and pursued a political career in Washington, DC, most notably as a US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Suggested by caseyrackham In 2000, Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire star Mara Wilson left acting to focus on writing. In 2016, she told NPR, "There wasn't like one big moment where I knew I was done. ... The rejection hurt because it had been just such a prominent part of my life for so long. It had been the thing that defined me. I remember in college, I would sleep through my acting classes — I would self-sabotage — because I was so afraid to let people see me as an actor. ... I was terrified; I was frozen with fear. That's when I started focusing more on writing. Writing I'd always loved." In 2016, Wilson went on to write a book about her life, titled Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame. In 2023, she wrote another book titled Good Girls Don't, which is "a coming-of-age memoir that bravely examines both the friendships Wilson formed as a child actor in Hollywood and the complex family relationships that shaped her." Suggested by u/HappyCuppiccino
Wall Street Journal
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements' Review: Seth MacFarlane Channels the Chairman
Frank Sinatra's incomplete attempt to record Billy Strayhorn's intricate jazz classic 'Lush Life' is one of the most curious episodes in the great singer's immense canon. He commissioned an arrangement from his most accomplished musical director, Nelson Riddle, and planned to include it on his classic ballad album 'Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely.' At the session itself, on May 29, 1958, he got as far as the complete verse and about two lines of the chorus when he abruptly changed his mind. After some dialogue, presumably with the producer, Dave Cavanaugh, we hear Sinatra say loudly that he intends to 'put it aside for about a year!' That arrangement is one of 12 such rarities being performed by the singer, producer, writer and comic actor Seth MacFarlane on a new album titled 'Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements.' As it happens, 'Lush Life' is the only one of these dozen charts that Sinatra actually took to the studio. It also shows why the singer made the correct decision to abort when he realized that song and arrangement weren't right for him. Many of the other pieces here, unearthed and given their premieres by Mr. MacFarlane—a pop-music and songbook buff as well as a talented baritone who sings in Sinatra's general sonic sphere, and serves as a worthy stand-in for the Chairman of the Board—are, in fact, lost treasures. The set starts with a warm, swinging treatment of 'Give Me the Simple Life,' a 1945 tune that Bing Crosby inspired Sinatra to sing and which Riddle infuses with his characteristic flutes and trombones. Riddle also contributed a beautiful orchestration of the heartfelt ballad 'Hurry Home.' Two charts by Billy May are instant classics: To hear this whimsical 'Flying Down to Rio' is to immediately regret that it didn't make the cut of the classic 1958 'Come Fly With Me.' Sinatra hesitated to record 'When Joanna Loved Me,' even in this exceptional Riddle version—although he did sing a different arrangement in concerts in the 1980s—because it was so identified with Tony Bennett, who named his daughter after the song.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Seth MacFarlane on Channeling Frank Sinatra for ‘Lush Life' & Who Will Be His ‘First Call' If He Uncovers a Lost Sinatra Duet
Thanks to a decadeslong love of Frank Sinatra and a relationship with his family that started when Frank Sinatra Jr. guest-starred on Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane was entrusted with a gold mine of never-released material arranged for the late crooner that has become his just-released ninth studio album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements. 'If you're an aficionado of this kind of music, it's like being a Lennon-McCartney fan and finding something that was written in like 1969 that was just never played,' MacFarlane tells Billboard's Pop Shop Podcast of Frank's daughter, Tina Sinatra, approaching him with the opportunity to dig into 1,200 archival boxes of unrecorded sheet music arranged specifically for her dad. 'And you hear it, and it's like, 'My God.' More from Billboard Seth MacFarlane Salutes Frank Sinatra on His New Album 'Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements' Taylor Swift No Longer Needs to Re-Record Debut Album & 'Reputation,' But Have Fans Come to Expect 'Taylor's Version'? Janet Jackson & Jennifer Lopez Aren't Leaving Las Vegas Anytime Soon After 2025 AMAs 'You know, the songs that we have are the songs that we have from his discography; obviously he's gone, the arrangers are gone, so there's nothing new. And then all of a sudden, it's like, 'Oh, you know what? There's one more cookie at the bottom of the bag.'' Listen to MacFarlane's full interview in the new Pop Shop Podcast episode below: Below, find highlights from our conversation with MacFarlane, and listen to the full chat in the podcast above. In many cases, no one has ever heard of them, because they just didn't exist. There's a song called 'Who's in Your Arms Tonight' — you could travel to the ends of the earth before we did this, and you would not find a single person who knows that song, because it just was never recorded, and everyone involved with this writing is long gone. … We asked the oldest guys in the band — I mean, our bassist played for Frank Sinatra for years in the last part of his life, and he had no idea what this was. So about a third of the songs on the album are songs in which both the song and the arrangement are just completely unknown. Particularly in the case of [Sinatra arranger] Nelson Riddle, you could instantly hear his signature trademarks, like those flutes. And that was what was so interesting. There was no question who wrote this, but it was new. It was familiar stylistically, but it was new, in the same way you watch a Wes Anderson movie that's brand-new, you're instantly going to know it's him. You're going to see his visual touchstones, but the movie's brand-new. That's kind of how it was. It was so clearly Nelson Riddle, but we were hearing the first new Nelson Riddle chart that anyone has heard in decades. So it was a pretty profound moment. It would have been nice if we had found some, you know, Rosemary Clooney or Peggy Lee duet. I mean, Liz would have been my first call. For this kind of music, there's just no one better on the planet, but so far, we have not found any duets. We haven't dug through these boxes in such detail that there couldn't be one — there may be. There are 1,200 boxes. We couldn't play everything on that day because an orchestra is expensive. … But there's so much in that archive that it is possible, and, yeah, if we find something, then we'll give Liz a call. There are a couple [songs] that we recorded that we cut from this album, just because we had, I don't know, some edict to get it down to 12 songs or less. All I know is we were told initially, I think they wanted it to be like six songs. I'm, like, 'Guys, that's not an album.' I don't know, there's all this, like, marketing data that they go by, and really, nobody knows sh–, because if they did, everything would be a monster hit. [Laughs] So I do remember us pushing back and saying, 'Let's do an album's worth of songs for this thing.' So it's a dozen songs, which, for a Sinatra album, was in the ballpark. And there were a couple songs that we did record that were not included that would be on the next one. … There are probably two albums' worth of real, honest-to-God songs that can be released. Is three days a residency? [Laughs] I once spent a week in Vegas, and I was like, 'I'm forgetting who I am. I'm an insane person. The walls are moving.' That's a lot of Vegas. __________ Also on this week's Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Taylor Swift's former No. 1 album reputation, released in 2017, jumps from No. 78 to No. 5 on the Billboard 200 following an outpouring of fan support of the project after Swift announced she had acquired her Big Machine Records-era music catalog. Plus, SEVENTEEN and Miley Cyrus' latest releases debut in the top five, while the top slots on both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100 are static, with Morgan Wallen's 'I'm the Problem' and Alex Warren's 'Ordinary' staying put. We also hit the biggest pop headlines of the week, including Sabrina Carpenter's new 'Manchild' single and video, Darren Criss and Nicole Scherzinger winning at the Tony Awards, David Byrne joining Olivia Rodrigo onstage at Governors Ball, and Mariah Carey returning with her new Eric B. & Rakim-sampling single 'Type Dangerous.' The Billboard is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard's weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard's executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard's managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on or or your favorite podcast provider. ( on Best of Billboard Drake's Historic Chart Week: How He Matched The Beatles' 57-Year-Old Record How Elton John Keeps Up His Hot 100 Hot Streak With Dua Lipa Duet 'Cold Heart' Pink's 'All I Know So Far' Has Us Looking Back at the History of Live Music on the Charts
