Seth MacFarlane is trading Frank Sinatra for Kermit. The Grammy-nominated recording artist and Family Guy creator has announced Seth MacFarlane Sings the Muppets, a 14-track collection of songs from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and the classic Muppet films, due Sept. 18 via Verve Records/Republic Records. Along with the announcement, MacFarlane has released his version of Kermit’s enduring “Bein’ Green.”
Written by Joe Raposo and originally performed by Jim Henson as Kermit, “Bein’ Green” has long since escaped the Muppet universe to become a standard in its own right, with recordings by Ray Charles, Sinatra and Van Morrison, among many others. MacFarlane’s version puts his familiar croon against a lush orchestral setting.
The new project follows 2025’s Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, MacFarlane’s collection of previously unheard Sinatra arrangements. MacFarlane spoke to SPIN about his fascination with the orchestra as much as the singer, arguing that great arrangements can give a recording a sense of weight and significance that modern productions often lack. “I think even if the audience doesn’t know what they’re hearing is live acoustic music, it somehow makes the show feel a little more important,” he said.
That philosophy is all over Seth MacFarlane Sings the Muppets. Working with arranger Andrew Cottee, MacFarlane has reimagined songs by Raposo, Paul Williams and Jeff Moss in the tradition of the Hollywood orchestras of the 1940s and ’50s. The arrangements were inspired specifically by the work of Nelson Riddle and Billy May, among others — the same musical lineage MacFarlane explored on Lush Life.
“Songs from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and the Muppet films became bona fide standards,” MacFarlane says. “We both loved the idea of creating an album in which we selected our favorites and recorded them in the style that might have come out of orchestrators like Nelson Riddle and Billy May, had these songs existed in the golden era of arranging.”
The album draws primarily from the first three Muppet movies — The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan — while also reaching into Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. The track list moves from “Together Again” and “Somebody’s Getting Married” through “Rainbow Connection,” “Halfway Down the Stairs” and “The First Time It Happens,” with Liz Gillies joining MacFarlane for “Movin’ Right Along.”
The sessions brought together a London-and-L.A. orchestra at Skywalker Ranch studio, with Joel McNeely producing, John Wilson conducting and Rich Breen engineering, while Cottee handled the new orchestrations.
Prior to Lush Life, MacFarlane spent years studying the details of classic arrangements and learning from the musicians around him. “I’ve been very gratified that people have been able to separate this and recognize, by using their own ears, that we’re people who take this very seriously,” he said. “We didn’t treat this like a vanity project. This is serious fucking music. We love this music.”
