In the spring of 2025, more than sixty years after she recorded it, Connie Francis’s song “Pretty Little Baby” became a viral sensation on TikTok, used in millions of videos by people who had never heard of her. Francis, then in her late eighties, joined the app to thank them. A few months later, on July 16, 2025, she died at a hospital in Florida, where she had lived for years. She was 87. Her friend and publicist, Ron Roberts, announced her death.
Who’s Sorry Now?
She was born Concetta Rosemarie Franconero in Newark, New Jersey, on December 12, 1937, and grew up in an Italian American family in nearby Belleville. Her father pushed her into performing as a child, playing the accordion. After a run of flop singles, her 1958 version of the 1920s song “Who’s Sorry Now?” became a top five hit and launched one of the most successful careers of the pre-Beatles era.
Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool
Between 1957 and 1964 Francis was rarely out of the charts. In 1960 “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” made her the first woman to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” followed. She recorded in Italian, Spanish, German and other languages, and starred in the film Where the Boys Are, whose title song became a hit.
A life of tragedy
Her later life was marked by tragedy. In 1974 she was raped in a motel room after a concert, and the lawsuit she won led to changes in hotel security across America. In 1981 her brother was murdered. She struggled with mental illness for years and wrote about it in her 1984 autobiography, Who’s Sorry Now? She later campaigned for victims of violent crime and for better mental health care.
Francis’s first big hit asked “Who’s sorry now?”, and her last brush with fame came when a new generation discovered her voice at the very end of her life.