(via Billboard and People) by Steve Knopper/Rachel DeSantis
Connie Francis is having a moment six decades in the making.
If not for TikTok, Connie Francis‘ 1962 tinkly organ bop “Pretty Little Baby” may have been forever obscure. It was never a hit, and Francis, reached by phone at her Parkland, Fla., home, barely remembers recording it. “I had to listen to it to identify it,” admits the 87-year-old pop legend, who became the first woman to top the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo act in July 1960 with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” one of her three Hot 100 No. 1s.
“Then, of course, I recognized the fact that I had done it in seven languages.”
A friend recently informed Francis that “Pretty Little Baby” had turned up on TikTok as a “viral hit,” an upbeat soundtrack for people (including Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian) showing off babies, puppies, kittens and – befitting the lyric “you can ask the flowers” – flowers. Francis responded: “What’s that?” In a sense, TikTok is just a technological update of American Bandstand in the ’60s, when Dick Clark’s TV countdown regularly drew 8 million viewers and automatically turned songs into hits. “Without Dick Clark, there would have been no Connie Francis,” Francis says.
“Pretty Little Baby” was one of 40 songs Francis recorded during several recording sessions over four days in August 1961, according to her 2017 autobiography Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story Vol. 1. The track landed on her Connie Francis Sings Second Hand Love & Other Hits album.
Francis was 23 years old when the song came out as a B-side to the single “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter.”
On April 10, “Pretty Little Baby” was streaming 17,000 times per week in the U.S.; a month later, it was streaming 2.4 million times, an increase of more than 7,000%. The track has 10 billion TikTok views, hitting No. 1 on the app’s Viral 50 and Top 50 charts, and recently crossed over to streaming success, with 14 million global streams, landing at No. 67 on Spotify’s Global Top 100. Francis’ label, Universal Music, recently reissued the versions Francis had sung in Swedish, Japanese and other languages in 1962, when her label, MGM, hoped to score hits in regions outside the U.S.
Of her newfound virality, she tells Billboard: “I’m getting calls from everywhere: ‘You’re a TikTok phenomenon.'”
Editor’s note: This story parallels that of a tune called “Ladyfingers”, from Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass’ 1965 Whipped Cream & Other Delights album, which the 90-year-old Alpert reports has generated over two billion views on TikTok. And like Connie Francis’ “Pretty Little Baby”, “Ladyfingers” wasn’t a hit, or even a single.
And to put Connie Francis’ 10 billion TikTok views for “Pretty Little Baby” into perspective, the number is roughly 3 times the world’s population in the year the song came out.
Connie on recording her first hit, “Who’s Sorry Now”:
I didn’t want to record the song. My father insisted that I record “Who’s Sorry Now.” I did three other songs at the session first, in the hopes of not being able to get to “Who’s Sorry Now” in the four-hour time allotted to me. I had 16 minutes left in the session and I said, “That’s a wrap, fellas, there’s no time for ‘Who’s Sorry Now.'” My father said, “If I have to nail you to that microphone, you’re going to do at least one take of ‘Who’s Sorry Now.'” So that’s what I did – one take of “Who’s Sorry Now.” And I didn’t try to imitate anybody else, as I always had on my recordings. By the time I was 14, I did demonstration records, and a publisher would say, “Connie, give us some of that great Patti Page sound, give me some of that great Kay Starr sound, give me some of that great Teresa Brewer sound.” I didn’t have a style of my own yet. But on “Who’s Sorry Now,” I was so turned off on the song that I didn’t try to imitate anybody else. I just sounded like myself for the first time. And it was a hit.
The New Jersey native dealt with a number of tragedies over the years, including mental health struggles. She is now retired and lives in Florida, where she regularly posts photos of her day-to-day life.
Read more: https://people.com/connie-francis-reacts-pretty-little-baby-being-tiktok-hit-11737737
Every Moment Has A Song 