Connie Francis' 'Pretty Little Baby' became an unexpected TikTok hit — 63 years after its release

Independent

4 days ago

Connie Francis was a giant of 1950s and '60s sugary-sweet pop, notching more than a dozen hits. In the months leading up to her death, announced Thursday, she experienced one more in 'Pretty Little Baby,' which has become a viral hit on TikTok six decades after its release.
As of Thursday, more than 22.5 million TikTok videos have been created using the sound, often partnering videos of baby animals, toddlers, makeup tutorials and retro fashions. According to TikTok, those videos have amassed more than 45.5 billion views, globally. Celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian and North West have used it, too, with West lip-syncing along to the track.
Hooky, feel-good pop songs tend to do well on TikTok, and 1962's 'Pretty Little Baby' is an exemplar of that phenomenon. Users gravitated toward the song's wholesome simplicity, sweet vocals, delicate organ and upstroke riffs. 'You can ask the flowers / I sit for hours / Telling all the bluebirds / The bill and coo birds / Pretty little baby, I'm so in love with you,' Francis swoons on the verse that has picked up steam on the platform.
And all of this has transpired in mere months: According to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company, 'Pretty Little Baby' was earning just over 17,000 on-demand audio streams in the U.S. during the week ending April 10. A month later, that number had climbed to 2.4 million. That's a growth of over 7,000%. The song has earned over 29 million streams this year so far.
In one popular video, which garnered over 56 million views, a user posted about baby teething hacks for first-time moms. Another user, Amari Goins, posted a video, with over 112 million views, of her 2-year-old daughter singing along to the lyrics, noting that her toddler picked up the song because of how often they heard it on TikTok.
Most recently, TikTok users have begun posting covers of 'Pretty Little Baby' as part of a singing challenge, where they exaggerate Francis' performance with their own stylized vocal runs. Francis, who died at 87, herself joined TikTok as a result of her song's popularity, and her first two videos — which earned 16.3 million and 31.2 million views, respectively — furthered engagement. In her first video, posted in early June, she said she was 'flabbergasted and amazed' at the song's resurgence.
'To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me,' Francis said in that first post, which she followed with a clip of herself lip-syncing to the song.
For decades, the song lived in relative obscurity — written by Don Stirling and Bill Nauman for Francis, it was never a single and was originally released in the U.K. as the B-side of her 1962 single 'I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter.' It appears on her album 'Connie Francis Sings 'Second Hand Love,'' released the same year. More than 60 years later, the song reached No. 20 on Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart in June 2025 and hit both the Hot 100's Bubbling Under chart and the Billboard Global 200.
In Francis' last TikTok video, posted late last month, she thanked the 'many wonderful artists' who paid tribute to her, and all the users who sang along with her.
Peter Lemongello Jr., a singer and performer who called Francis a friend, posted a TikTok in May where he sang the song to Francis, what he wrote on Facebook was 'one of the greatest and most exciting moments of my career so far.' The video garnered over 15 million views.
'There are no words to express this monumental loss,' he wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. 'I will be forever grateful to her for the help she gave me with my career.'
Ian Paget, a TikTok creator, posted a tearful video Thursday and said he hopes Francis and her family 'have felt that love from the younger crowd learning who she is.'
The TikTok popularity of 'Pretty Little Baby' prompted her label Republic/UMe Records to reissue versions Francis had sung in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish in 1962. Bruce Resnikoff, president and CEO of UMe, wrote in a statement that the global catalog division was saddened but took 'comfort in knowing how joyful and fulfilled she felt in these last few months, as a new generation discovered her music and celebrated her legacy.'
In May, as the song took off, Francis thanked TikTok and its users for 'the wonderful, and oh so unexpected, reception' in a Facebook post.
As for her reaction to having a 'viral hit'? She continued: 'Clearly out of touch with present day music statistics terminology, my initial response was to ask: 'What's that?' Thank you everyone!'