Oct. 11, 2025

TIK TOK'S VIRAL HITS - Connie Francis - "Pretty Little Baby"

Show Notes
Transcript

Welcome back to Hitmaker Chronicles! I'm your host, Garrett Fisher. Today we're exploring the most unlikely viral sensation of 2025 - a forgotten B-side from 1962 that gave an 87-year-old legend one final moment in the sun. We'll trace how Connie Francis' "Pretty Little Baby" went from one of 40 songs recorded in a marathon session to TikTok's #5 global Song of Summer, 63 years later. It's a story about time collapse, generational discovery, and the bittersweet beauty of a star taking her final bow just as the world remembered her name. Let's dive into this extraordinary resurrection.

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Callaroga Shark Media, September twenty twenty five. I'm Garrett Fisher

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and I need you to understand something about time. In

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August nineteen sixty one, a twenty three year old Connie

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Francis walked into MGM Records for what would become a

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legendary marathon recording session four days forty songs, among them.

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Buried somewhere in the middle of this exhausting sprint was

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a twee little number called Pretty Little Baby, a song

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so forgettable that Francis herself would later admit she had

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to listen to it in twenty twenty five just to

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remember she'd recorded it sixty three years. That's how long

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it took for this song to matter, and when it

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finally did, Connie Francis had about three months left to live.

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The song was one of forty tracks Francis recorded during

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those marathon four days in August nineteen six, eventually selected

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for her nineteen sixty two album Connie Francis Singing Secondhand

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Love and Other Hits. It was released as the B

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side too I'm Going to Be Warm This Winter in

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the UK, Norway, India, Denmark and South Africa. The Kiss

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of death in the record business. B sides were where

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songs went to be forgotten. To understand how extraordinary this

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resurrection is, you need to understand who. Connie Francis was

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born Conchetta Rosemarie Francnaro in Newark nineteen thirty seven. She

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was groomed from childhood by her accordion playing father, George,

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who controlled every aspect of her life with an iron fist.

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When she fell in love with Bobby Darren in the

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late nineteen fifties and rumors of marriage surfaced, her father

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stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darren,

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ending the relationship. But professionally she was untouchable. Francis became

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the first woman to reach number one one on the

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Billboard Hot one hundred when and Everybody's Somebody's Full topped

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the chart in nineteen sixty and was the most popular

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female vocalist in the United States between nineteen fifty eight

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and nineteen sixty four. She had the voice, the look,

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the everything that pre Beatles America wanted. Dick Clark loved her.

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She won Best Female Vocalist on American Bandstand for five

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straight years. By the time Pretty Little Baby was recorded.

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Francis was at her commercial peak, but already sensing the

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winds changing. The British were coming, rock was getting harder.

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The sweet innocent sound of you can ask the Flowers,

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I sit for hours telling all the bluebirds was already

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starting to sound like it belonged to another era, even

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in nineteen sixty two, and then silence for sixty three years.

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The resurrection began sometime in early twenty twenty five, as

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it always does now, Accidentally, ironically, without any logic anyone

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can explain, the song started averaging six hundred thousand and

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plus daily creates on TikTok, with posts from Kim Kardashian

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and Northwest Kylie Jenner, Brook Monk and others. Gen Z

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and Jen Alfa were using this sugary, sweet nineteen sixty

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two melody to soundtrack videos of their babies, their pets,

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their vintage outfits. Nobody knew why this song. Why now?

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The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Francis herself said, I

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had to listen to it to identify it. Then, of

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course I recognized the fact that I had done it

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in seven languages. Imagine that, being eighty seven years old

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in failing health and suddenly learning that a song you

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forgot you recorded is being played eighty billion times by

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children who weren't even born when you retired. In just

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five weeks, the song went from earning seventeen thousand official

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streams a week in the US to four million a week,

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an increase of more than twenty thousand percent. It hit

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number sixty seven on Spotify's Global Top one hundred, number

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two on the Global Daily Viral Songs chart, and topped

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the viral charts in sixty five countries. Francis was thrilled

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but bewildered. She enlisted her publicist son to help create

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a TikTok account, thanking supporters and expressing how thrilling it

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was that even kindergarteners had become familiar with her music.

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When asked why she thought people were drawn to it,

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she said, I think it's innocent and pure, and this

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is a time when everything is in such chaos. She

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wasn't wrong. There's something almost desperately wholesome about the TikTok

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generation latching onto this artifact of pre Kennedy assassination America,

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this relic from before Vietnam, before watergates, before everything went sideways.

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It's like they're mining the past for innocence. They never

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experience finding comfort in a voice that predates their grandparents' trauma.

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But here's where the story turns from miraculous to heartbreaking.

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Francis had posted earlier that month that she'd been hospitalized

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with extreme pain. She died on July sixteenth, twenty twenty five,

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due to declining health. In the midst of the song's resurgence.

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She got to see the beginning of her revival, got

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to record a few grateful tiktoks, got to know that

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eighty billion people had heard her voice, but she never

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got to see where it might have led. The timing

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feels almost scripted by a cruel dramatist. After a life

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marked by trauma, the nineteen seventy four rape at knife

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point after a concert, her brother George's murder in nineteen

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eighty one, being committed to a psychiatric hospital by her father,

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she finally gets this unexpected gift of relevance, of joy,

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of connection with a new generation, and then gone. You

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may even rushed to release the song digitally for the

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first time in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish versions,

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bringing these nineteen sixty two rarities to streaming the music

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industry scrambling to capitalize on a sixty three year old

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B side while its singer lay dying in a Florida hospital.

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What does it mean that TikTok's fifth biggest song of

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summer twenty twenty five was recorded when John F. Kennedy

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was president, That teenagers are lip syncing to a woman

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who performed for Queen Elizabeth in nineteen sixty three. That

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an algorithm can reach back six decades and pluck out

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a forgotten B side and make it more popular than

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it ever was in its own time. It means that

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time doesn't work the way it used to. The past

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isn't past anymore. It's all present, all available, all waiting

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to be discovered or rediscovered. Every song ever recorded is

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potentially next week's viral sensation. Every forgotten artist is one

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algorithm tweak away from resurrection. But it also means something sadder.

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Connie Francis got her flowers, but she got them as

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she was leaving the garden. She got to hear billions

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of young voices singing along to a song she'd forgotten.

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Got to experience one more hit in a life that

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had too many misses. But she didn't get to tour

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on it, didn't get to do the talk show Victory Lap,

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didn't get to fully inhabit this strange new fame. There's

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even a Broadway connection. The new musical Just in Time,

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starring Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darren, features Francis as a

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character portrayed by Tony nominated Gracie Lawrence. She was supposed

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to travel to New York to see it. She never

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made it. More in a moment, the last time Pretty

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Little Baby charted anywhere was never. It was a B

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side in nineteen sixty two, invisible even in its own time.

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Its first time on any chart was twenty twenty five,

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when its singer was eighty seven and dying. That's not

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a comeback story. That's a ghost story, A beautiful, sad,

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perfectly twenty twenty five ghost story about how we commune

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with the dead through their voices, finding comfort in their innocence,

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their simplicity, their distance from our current chaos. You can

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ask the flowers, Frances saying, in nineteen sixty one, young

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and traumatized but not yet broken, I sit for hours

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telling all the bluebirds the Bill and Coop Bird's Pretty

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Little Baby, I'm so in love with you. Sixty three

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years later, billions of pretty little babies hurt her. They

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asked the flowers. The flowers remembered her name just in

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time to say goodbye. Sometimes the most powerful resurrections happen

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at the very end. Sometimes you have to wait your

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whole life for your B side to become your A side.

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Sometimes the algorithm is accidentally merciful, giving old stars one

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more moment in the light before it goes dark forever.

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Taani Francis waited sixty three years for Pretty Little Baby

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to matter. It finally did for about twelve weeks in

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twenty twenty five. That counts as a happy ending.