The showrunner, who is behind Fox's multi-billion dollar animated empire, is now a two-time Grammy nominee.
MacFarlane, who only recently began trying his hand at writing music, was nominated in the Best Song Written For Visual Media category, with "Christmastime is Killing Us," which he co-wrote with Ron Jones and Danny Smith.
In an even bigger coup, the producer, who is currently overseeing American Dad!, The Cleveland Show, an update of the classic animated series The Flintstones, a revamp of the 1980s PBS series Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, an untitled animated series he's preparing to pitch, a feature film due out next summer called Ted, a recurring gig as Comedy Central's celebrity roast master (most recent victim: Charlie Sheen) and the series that made them all possible, Family Guy, was also nominated for his big band album Music Is Better Than Words.
The debut album is nominated alongside musical heavyweights Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Harry Connick Jr. and Susan Boyle in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category.
The Hollywood Reporter's Oct. 21 cover story reported that when he set out to make the record with American Dad! composer Joel McNeely, he had one goal in mind: to introduce others to the kind of music -- including many obscure songs from the 1940s, '50s and '60s -- he has been listening to and loving since he was a boy. In a nod to his idol, he recorded the vocals with the actual microphone Frank Sinatra used on many of his classic albums. (According to McNeely, there's already talk of a brief East Coast tour this year and a desire to make a follow-up album.)
"Seth is probably more knowledgeable about this music than anybody I've ever known," says McNeely, who has spent his career ensconced in that world. "If you name a song off of a particular album from that era, he'll be able to tell you not just who arranged it, but what studio it was recorded at, probably the year that it was recorded and who some of the players were. It's a little freaky."
