Frank Sinatra is widely considered one of the most influential musical artists of the 20th century. Over the course of his more than 50 years in the spotlight, he released 59 studio albums and 297 singles, including hits like “My Way,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Somethin’ Stupid,” and more. With a career as iconic as it was prolific, Ol’ Blue Eyes became a bedrock artist of his generation—not to mention a bonafide heartthrob.
Behind the scenes, Sinatra was busy with a bustling family life on top of his career. The singer married four times over the years, and had three children, all with his first wife, Nancy Barbato: The first born is Nancy Sinatra, now 81; then came Frank Sinatra Jr., who died in 2016 at 72; and the youngest is Tina Sinatra, who's 73. Nancy rose to fame in 1966 for singing the hit song “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'.” Today, one of her two daughters—Angela Jennifer Lambert, known professionally as AJ Lambert—is making headlines with her own singing career. Now 47, Lambert is carrying on her grandfather’s legacy and continuing to honor his contribution to American music. Read on to see her now, and to hear about her childhood as the granddaughter of the one and only Chairman of the Board.
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AJ Lambert uses her music career to honor the legacy of her grandfather, Frank Sinatra.
Bobby Bank/Getty ImagesIn her 20s and 30s, Lambert played the bass in several indie bands, but she says it wasn’t until later in life that she fully embraced singing. She cites her legacy as Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter as part of her apprehension. “Anybody wading into that same business has to be crazy!” she told the U.K.'s Daily Mail in 2019.
Beginning in 2015, Lambert began covering her grandfather’s discography after being approached by members of her family about performing in a tribute show, according to The Guardian. “They approached me, the family powers that be, management types,” she explained to the outlet in 2019. “It seemed ridiculous to be a 41-year-old woman, at that time, singing ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘My Way.’ I said: ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing this, but I’m so honored to have that lineage, and I feel like I have to do something for it.’"
The result? A 2019 eclectic cover album of songs called Careful You from some of the artists she admires most, including several standards from her very own grandfather. “It was a long time coming before I felt like I was able to sort of talk about that legacy, to feel like I could honor it,” Lambert told WYNC public radio in a 2019 interview.
She’s also worked as a music supervisor in Hollywood.
Mike Pont/WireImage via Getty ImagesBesides his larger-than-life music career, Sinatra was also successful in film. He famously appeared in The Manchurian Candidate, Oceans 11, Some Came Running, High Society, Anchors Aweigh, and more. In 1954, he even earned an Academy Award and Golden Globe for his supporting role in From Here to Eternity.
Though Lambert has not starred in movies herself, she has immersed herself in the film world through music. In 1993, she was a production assistant on Wayne’s World, and she later found her footing in Hollywood working in various films' music department. She was the assistant to the music supervisor in a few movies in the early 2000s like Down to You and then she became the music supervisor herself on films like 2005's Shadowboxer and 2008's Tennessee.
In 2007, Lambert landed her first on-screen appearance on the hit HBO show The Sopranos, acting alongside her mother as a pair of lounge singers. On the episode, they performed a song Lambert wrote, “Bossman,” which appeared on her mom's 2004 self-titled album.
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She says her upbringing was surprisingly normal.
KMazur/WireImage via Getty ImagesDespite being the granddaughter of music royalty, Lambert says she had a normal childhood. “Everyone wants it to be jetting around and singing ‘My Way’ around the piano every day. It just wasn’t like that,” she told The Guardian.
“Contrary to what sounds like a super exciting life, it actually was quite normal,” she added to WNYC. “We had a really relatively normal upbringing.”
Lambert shared that because Sinatra didn't write his own songs, there was no great family fortune from publishing—only a modest fixed income from the Sinatra master recordings. “But it’s not enough to live off, because there’s a lot of us,” she clarified while speaking with The Guardian.
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Today, Lambert remembers her grandfather as both the mega-star and the man.
Bobby Bank/WireImage via Getty ImagesBesides her musical tributes to her late grandfather, Lambert also keeps his memory alive by hosting a monthly radio program on the Siriusly Sinatra channel of Sirius XM. On the show, called "Third Generation," she plays her favorite Sinatra hits alongside other tunes from the Great American Songbook. Similarly, her mother hosts her own show on the station, called "Nancy for Frank," where she shares recordings from the family archives and reflects on Sinatra’s life and legacy.
Lambert says the show has helped her reinterpret her grandfather's music in a new light. “When I hear things he sings, I hear them through some other filter,” she told The Guardian. “I hear them as a fan, but also as a human being I knew.”
“It’s almost like they’re two different people for me,” she later added. “I can see him as the totem and I can see him as the person, and they’re very different people, but I know both of them.”
